Scott’s Law of Rebrands

Over time, the probability of a rebrand starting in the midst of a large web project approaches 1.

—Scott Boyle, Measured Co-Founder

Like any good axiom, Scott’s Law of Rebrands was borne of experience. We’ve seen it happen enough that we know to it be universally truthy. (We call it Scott’s Law with tongue lodged firmly in cheek, of course.)

For our purposes, this is a rebrand that falls outside the scope of your project, but which will affect it in myriad knotty ways.

Out-of-scope rebrands always pose challenges, but approaching them the right way can bring long-term benefits to your project.

The imbalance of probabilities

Rebrands happen, and for any number of reasons. It may be to reposition in the market, to serve a new or evolving context, or to breathe new life into a stale brand.

Even when a rebrand isn’t on the cards, people are always tinkering at the edges. Technology and humanity are never finished, and so brands continually evolve. Duncan Nguyen’s Medium post on the evolution of Apple’s design language captures this well.

Brand visual identities tend to have a shelf-life of 2 to 5 years. So the odds of one overlapping a major web project are high, and only grow higher with time.

Accept the cards you’re dealt

A major rebrand inevitably disrupts a large web project running in parallel. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth—for at least a day or two.

Likely questions from your digital teams:

• What is the scope of the rebrand?
• When is it starting?
• How long will it take?
• What are the practical implications for my project?

No one has the answers to these questions at the point of a rebrand kick-off. All you know for sure is that it’s happening, you won’t have total control over it, and it will take as long as it takes.

Ongoing communication with brand and marketing teams is vital. They’re often siloed from the people that will implement, which only adds to the complexity. (Though this is mitigated for digital brands.)

So make friends with the brand and marketing teams. We’ve learned from experience how important it is to create two-way feedback mechanisms between these and your implementing teams over the course of the project or rebrand.

Get on the front foot

When you’re surrounded by uncertainty, a good approach is to mine that uncertainty for opportunities to build something better.

You can do that with some straightforward architectural thinking. Here are three things you can do to get on a positive footing.

1. Figure out what can be systematised

Start by looking at what aspects of the existing branding can be systematised. For example:

• Colour schemes and their contextual uses
• Typography (e.g. type sizes, typefaces, fallback font stacks)
• Icons (size, location, design descriptors)
• Spacing and alignment (e.g. margins, component spacing, vertical rhythm)
• Motion (e.g. timing, duration, motion descriptors)

Systematising the brand helps with consistency which will lead to more-polished UI. It also makes the brand easier to understand as a whole, which helps to assess the impact that changes will have. This helps you move from the mindset of “oh no, there’s a whole bunch of stuff to do” to “here’s what we’ll need to do”.

2. Encode the brand

When you’ve identified what can be systematised, a logical next step is to derive variables for those systems. Do this everywhere possible.

This doesn’t necessarily mean creating design tokens, although it probably will. The aim is to make it easy to change any aspect of the brand identity as needed. We sometimes call this encoding the brand.

Some would say that this process can cover all aspects of a future rebrand, but that isn’t the case. There will always be outliers: things that can’t be made into variables, not to mention new emerging needs.

But it does make your implementation as rebrand-ready as possible, and it makes tweaks to the branding trivial to implement.

3. Plan for flux

This point is a bit more holistic. Avoid thinking that brand work, and the digital gubbins around it, is ever finished.

Versioning is essential. We label and communicate versions clearly, so everyone can see what’s changed, and make informed decisions about when to adopt. (We recommend Semantic Versioning.)

Communication is vital. Call out changes and updates in a visible and timely way for the people that need them.

With robust versioning and good communication, your organisation can safely manage changes to your system.

Strength from flexibility

Reality is always messy and the future is unknowable. But by doing everything you can to systematise your brand and plan for future change, you’re laying the best possible foundations for success.

Things will go better when you see curve balls like rebrands as a chance to make your systems robust. When you make things adaptable, you stand to save the organisation time and money in the long term.