What OpenAI’s Logo Unveil Teaches Us About Internal Buy-In
A typeface has potentially left an open door to a rebrand.
Something that’s often scoffed at from the outside within the world of design and brand is the development of custom typefaces. Large companies are often seen making small changes to popular typefaces to bring them into the world of their own brand. Spotify, McDonalds, Netflix, and Apple have all taken this leap. And, while it’s an expensive endeavor to make these new developments, the cost they are seeking to offset is greater when considering the annual licensing price of a font not only per-head for desktop use but for audience size across web, digital, app, and advertising uses.
But is the font-use cost incurred by a tech company as sizable as OpenAI has become, spanning all of the above needs at a rapidly increasing rate this early in the game, any lower when they’ve leveraged the type opportunity as a toe in the door for a full-scale rebrand?
An internal sneak peek at OpenAI’s latest identity has alienated employees. Unseen to the public, the presented “O” logomark reportedly has taken a hard turn, being read as stark, from their current logo— an organic, flowering circle suggesting growth, cycles, and emerging ideas with a strong tech-forward rendering— imbued with the defined qualities of “precision, potential, and optimism.”
Knowing that we cannot yet, from a market-perspective, rate the effectiveness of the latest logo iteration, I stand firmly by the belief that brands cannot solely position themselves to appeal to their internal audiences— they must position with a consumer-first mindset to survive. However, that does not mean that brands do not dually serve as an indicator of workplace culture and beliefs. The internal backlash is a clear indicator that the presented logo does not resonate with its employee base’s outlook on the future of its products or company. Especially when developing a disruptive technology that can be as broadly and culturally divisive as artificial intelligence, the workforce that is responsible for creating such impacts has a deeply vested interest in the company’s value proposition, positioning, and, therefore, creative strategy.
OpenAI’s presentation of their new proposed identity has highlighted the importance of three considerations needing to be made when developing and communicating major brand changes:
Roll-out
You should not jump scare your market just as you should not jump scare your employees. Logos may be one piece of the puzzle of an entire brand’s story, but they are the face. The presentation of revolutionary rebranded materials to your employee- base must be comprehensive and whole. Do not neglect them in the presentation of concept or official launch.
Employee buy-in and culture
The understanding your employee base has of your company and its story, as it translates into brand, is intimate. They work with and feel the effects of your brand’s internal culture every day. They hired into your company because they bought into the vision of your brand through your mission and culture, cosigned by your logo. Each employee becomes responsible for evangelizing the mission and values of the company under the brand’s flag through their work. Some receive front-row seats to market perception of your brand and products directly from your targets and must be able to communicate its strengths with conviction. Product developments are forged in consideration of the unique cultural imprint of your brand and its values. And the environment you and your colleagues physically work in embodies the energy and experience that your brand exudes. Input is required by diverse internal parties at the highest-level of your brand’s creative pathway. Your workforce must buy into the creative and brand vision to productively enliven it through their work. If they feel there’s a cultural mismatch, their output will be impacted.
In the case of open AI, if they feel a vibrancy and sense of growth from their incumbent logo and are moving toward a mark that has been “void” in various reported critiques, how may that impact the nature of employees’ mindset and work? What values will they instill into every touchpoint, and how will it contribute to the world of their workplace?
Feedback
A deep understanding of your market and comprehensive studies should be the foundational element for brand reworks. But incorporating feedback from trusted groups of internal users early and often promotes more effective and diverse decision making when shaping the future of brands. Building a deeper understanding of how all users interact with and harness the power of your brand while allowing concerns to be raised from internal parties brings light to areas of the brand and its creative strategy that may not have been considered before. It’s important to negotiate some of the suggestions with the path forward for both your brand and creative strategy to ensure cultural alignment with your colleagues.
