RepHike is a young company, based in Buffalo, NY, that helps brands find their ideal micro-influencers and manage campaign collaborations. The world of online micro-influencers is a pretty new one, but already the market is saturated with many players who look and sound the same. We immersed ourselves in the sector and carved out a unique, relevant and authentic personality for RepHike - one that stands head and shoulders above the crowd.
The more we studied the competition and learned about "micro-influencers", the more we were able to get under the skin of what the project was really about. The competition is characterized by vibrant colors, technical marketing jargon, a fixation on data & tech, digital illustration and generic digital fonts. They look, feel and sound very similar. Everyone talks about these so-called micro-influencers as if they were just data points for the brand's bottom line.
These observation gave us clear direction. Unlike the competition, the RepHike brand identity would be characterized by natural colors, plain speak, a focus on people, photography and fonts with humanity & personality. The brand message find your people became the prominent piece of communication, with the name RepHike taking a back seat. Whenever possible we avoid the word micro-influencer, talking instead about people or creators.
Though the identity is primarily about people, the company name needed to remain RepHike. The logo needed a refresh that worked alongside everything else, without overshadowing the photography or the find your people message. It needed to be relevant and minimal. An R for RepHike merged seamlessly with a speech bubble form gave us a simple & elegant logo that references conversation, doesn't try too hard, and ties neatly into the logo typeface.
In contrast, the old logo featured vibrant colors and gradients (which already forced it into a bucket with the competition), and a shape that was needlessly convoluted and irrelevant. The typeface had an uncomfortable mix of rounded and sharp edges, which we cleaned up with a simple, contemporary sans-serif.