Kiss Branding on what happens when studio founders stay out of their own rebrand

Ask any designer who their nightmare client would be, and quite often they'll come back with a pithy yet honest answer: themselves. As a result, agency rebrands tend to drag on for years, limping through a morass of conflicting opinions, half-finished ideas and a worry that this is all drawing focus away from paying clients.

It's worth, then, paying attention whenever a studio actually pulls it off. And so we were keen to speak to co-founder and creative director Poonam Saini Kilb at Leeds studio Kiss Branding about their recent rebrand.

Poonam and her co-founder Matt Kilb, it turns out, did something pretty unusual in order to reinvent their business, which they'd originally launched in 2017. The two of them came up with a strategy, wrote it down, handed it over and then kept their hands off the actual design. (Well, mostly. At one point Matt was caught peering over design director Alex Phipps's shoulder and was told in no uncertain terms: "Don't look, it's not ready yet.")

Their strategy was built on the lover archetype. "The idea was that the best brands spark instant attraction between a business and the people it's for," Poonam explains. "We call this 'Brands that Kiss'. Cupid is the literal version of that moment. He fires the arrow, and the connection is made."

Falling in love

The character very nearly didn't make the cut. "He was chosen as a bit of fun in the concept stage," says Poonam. "Initially I thought a cupid might be too obvious as a mascot. As the team experimented with the execution, though, we all fell in love with him. Some of the team members wanted to give him a name and riffed up Roger Bowman. Which stuck, to the annoyance of our design director! But I like it. It gives our cupid personality and a human touch, which is what we need even more nowadays."

That certainly lands with the way a lot of design is heading these days, and I reckon that's all to the good. Personally, I wasn't a fan of the sans-serif, strip-everything-down-to-the-bare-minimum obsession of the late 2010s, but as Poonam notes, it wasn't always like that.

"When I was studying graphic design, every identity book paired a type logo with a symbol," she says. "Then everything got stripped back to type; we all saw it with the fashion houses. But now you're seeing brands like Burberry bringing their emblems back."

"When so much looks the same, a character helps you stand out and be remembered," she adds. "Symbols are very primal. When a mark is personified, people give it emotion and movement in their heads that a flat logo just can't get on its own."

Sketch first, pixels later

Suitably enough, everything in the new Kiss Branding identity started on paper. Roger was built up from basic shapes, starting with a rough triangle and a vanishing point, and going through more than 100 iterations.

"A lot of that is down to designer Alex Lancastle, who draws icons constantly and knows how to make something this detailed read well even at ten pixels wide," says Poonam. "We then brought in Marco Palmieri. We loved his hand-drawn animation work. We thought he'd bring Cupid's cheekiness to life, and give him a joyful personality."

The wordmark took Alex Phipps around a month of drawing, printing, squinting and redrawing. "A hand-drawn script lettering suited the story we were telling, but we didn't want it tipping into twee, ribbony territory," explains Poonam. "So it carries Cupid's sharp corners and beautiful curves, plus a horizontal line running through it, which is his arrow being pulled back.

"The K and I join to hint at a heart, or a bow, very subtly, and that connecting line creates the tension and the pull. Even when static, your brain adds movement. You'd lose that if you started with a premade typeface."

After they'd been so hands-off, the founders ended up waiting nervously for the big reveal, and it's given them fresh empathy for their own clients. "Matt and I both came out of it understanding the high stakes," Poonam says. "It's nerve-wracking leaving a brief with a team and then waiting for the big reveal. You're buying into the trust that your chosen team will deliver."

A shared life

Kiss Branding is, quite literally, a labour of love. Poonam and Matt had been dating for three years when they set up the studio, and they've now been together for 12. Given how often founders struggle to agree on the simplest of things, you might expect a rebrand to put a marriage under some strain. But apparently, not so.

"We're continuously working on it, but having a shared life-long project is a special thing," Poonam says. "The commitment levels required are another level. It does create strain at times, but it also brings us together.

"If anything, the rebrand took a weight off our shoulders, and we both really enjoyed the support and watching our team doing their best on it," she adds. "It meant we could actually briefly step back and marvel at the business we're building, albeit just for a moment."

That willingness to hand over control has proved useful in other ways. Poonam has been refreshingly open on LinkedIn about her pregnancy, and about still being partly involved with the business when cash flow demands. Her advice to other founders: prepare your team, then trust them.

"Having heard many perspectives from both sides, from some women working to the day before labour to those who fully took maternity leave, I'd side with easing off the gas pedal months before and empowering your team to feel confident they can make decisions without you," she says. "It gives you enough time to support them so they get to the level that you feel comfortable leaving them to it while you're off."

She's also realistic about how much luck plays a part. "I've been fortunate to run a business with my husband and a wonderful team who have proactively stepped up," she reflects. "If I didn't have that, or even if I was a solo business owner, it would be incredibly hard without a significant amount of savings to live off, as maternity allowance just won't cover it and the world doesn't stop while you're having a baby."

Her final piece of advice is simple: ask for help, and ask early. "In my life, I've seen far too many women suffer from not asking for help when they really need it," she says. "So if there's a freelancer who can cover a few hours for you, or a friend who can help with the baby, reach out to them and get those plans in place early."