Edwards. Still unmistakably red, now built to lead.

How do you keep a market leader recognisable, when the brand no longer works everywhere the market now lives? Edwards is a global leader in vacuum technology and had recently come under the Atlas Copco umbrella. But the recognisable mark was showing its age, the visual identity had been built for print rather than digital and social, and the competition was closing in on the ground Edwards had long held as ‘the’ red brand in the category. Its external brand needed updating to reassert where it stood, but without moving too far away from its own equity. 

Even on an identity job, we started by taking the brand apart rather than reaching for something new. We interrogated the existing logo to separate what carried real equity – the red, the confident upper-case italic, the wide letterforms – from what was dragging it down, a dated typeface, uneven weights and spacing, and a standalone symbol that read as decoration rather than meaning. From there, we changed only what held it back, redrawing the logotype to keep its recognisable character while resolving the flaws and giving the symbol a genuine purpose, rooted in the circular motion at the heart of everything Edwards makes. Rather than presenting a single answer, we created a clear range of routes, from safe evolution to a braver revolution, so the decision could be made with the full picture in view.

We then built the infrastructure, taking the red deeper against clean white, supported by greys and a set of accent colours so Edwards could own the colour more assertively than anyone borrowing it, plus an uncluttered and muted photography style that lets nothing compete with the red. That came together with typography, graphic language and tone of voice as one coherent system rather than a loose set of assets, delivered as guidelines and templates so anyone can apply the brand correctly, long after we'd handed it over.