CLOSE
March 27, 2025
6
minute read
“She’s wearing such a cute flower crown and has the prettiest eyes. Are we sure about retouching her?”
This is what ran through my mind as I looked at the Photoshop window with a hand drawn cow logo on my computer screen.
Before becoming creative director at Kahawai, I freelanced as a designer and art director for different types of creative, design, and marketing agencies. Logo and packaging redesign as a marketing and business strategy was a tactic I saw used across the board. In many cases the outward redesign ended up reflecting–or deflecting– internal business successes or failures. Whether as an attempt to appeal to investors, mark an acquisition, or even mask bad press, what started as a logo redesign project morphed into creating a corporate scapegoat or being the creative canary in a cold mine.
I remember sitting in the conference room at one of my former jobs, everyone gathered around the glass table, ready for a project kick-off meeting. Our client was an independent family farm from Wisconsin with a line of milk and dairy products. They brought us their best-seller, a creamy herbed ricotta cheese in a cute glass jar with a printed stick-on label. We all taste-tested it on little crackers we had brought up from the break room. The origin story we heard started with the founder reconnecting with her childhood friend who it turned out did some freelance illustration on the side. The two met up on the farm, and out of all the cattle in the pasture, this one sweet little brown and white Guernsey cow proved to be the illustrator’s true muse. Millie the cow came to be a smiling pen and ink portrait made up of delicate line strokes, strong color contrast, placed in an intricate frame. The owner showed off a small frame with a photo of Millie next to the original drawing and we all admired the resemblance between the two.
We ended the meeting by discussing their goal of transforming their small, local business into a much bigger food and beverage brand. They gave the example that Starbucks started out as a single local coffee shop in Seattle, but their siren logo can now be found on grocery store shelves everywhere. My CEO and their CEO agreed on a brand strategy that essentially boiled down to “looking big” in order to “become big” by courting investor funding.
When it came time to work on the logo and packaging redesign, there were two paths ahead of us. Embrace Millie, or fire her from her position of company mootriarch (one and only pun allowed per article which I am cashing in now). Luckily Millie was saved, or so I thought. It was decided not to remove the illustrated cow logo from the brand but rather to just give her a makeover (complete with the hard-to-avoid lipstick on a pig joke).
Like in pretty much every profession, we creative department folks have shorthand when talking amongst ourselves. We talk about “doing the design agency thing” where a concept is pitched that is different just for the sake of being different, even if doing little to nothing is our real recommendation.
So when it came to Millie’s refresh, even if we had thought it was best to change nothing about the original logo, it became apparent that we had to “do something”. What started out as a detailed drawing made by hand by an artist with a unique point of view, eventually became less and less iconic with each rough edge that was cleaned up, line that was made more even, curve smoothed out, proportion made more balanced. We even went after her flower crown, taking a few violets off.
Looking back I think how dare we!
On the surface, it seemed like this was the right direction to move the company forward but still keep its history. It was as if Millie was the cliche of a rebel gone right, trading her messy hair and paint-splattered overalls for a respectable updo and a serious business suit. But Millie’s makeover never quite worked for the brand, the company, or its customers. The cracks started out small, but ultimately broke the redesign. Some of the internal team on the client side didn’t like the new logo and kept using the old one on marketing material they made on their own. Some customers gave passing comments at farmer’s markets about how they missed the old logo. Industry partners mentioned mixed feelings – some were happy to see the new direction that felt more big business to them, and the others were less enthusiastic for the same reasons. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me that even Millie herself didn’t like the new logo.
“Can’t please everyone” is the knee-jerk reaction to dismiss these takes. Similar words echo in my mind like “you don’t want to be stuck in the past” or “this is what you have to do to be taken seriously as a business”. Now I would respond with another cliché – it’s not so simple.
We’ve often seen, especially during certain eras of design trends, “doing the design agency thing” where a whimsical, intricate illustration is turned into an oversimplified, flat, one-dimensional icon. Read more about how taking a minimalistic viewpoint to everything can remove more than just clutter.
Recently Kahawai has taken on more rebranding projects that include logos with illustrations, animals even, so I think back to that cow logo a lot. I can’t help but think the grass is greener on the other side and daydream about walking her down a different design direction towards a much more thoughtfully branded pasture.
How could things have gone better for Millie? Here are some ways we see to keep integrity in illustration when working on brand refreshes involving original artwork – all while seeing marketing success and business growth for our clients:
So if a cow, a cat, and a mouse were to walk into this marketing company today, they’d have a much happier ending.
