Creating the new global brand for the world’s leading home assistance provider

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One of the biggest projects that I’ve been involved in has been the rebranding of one of the world’s leading home assistance providers, HomeServe. Over the years HomeServe had grown organically across Europe and the USA, but this had led to a variety of sub-brands that reflected local trends rather than a global organisation. Our challenge was to create a single unifying global brand and supporting sub-brands that each territory could really own.

 

My task was to come up with a new brand logo supported by a new brand look and feel. So I decided to retain a recognisable visual asset from the previous logo, the smiling house icon, and then make it warmer, friendlier and clearer. After trialing many fonts, I settled on Museo Sans Rounded, which is very legible (key for clear and important information), comes in a wide range of weights (ideal for separating out different types of messaging), yet also has a friendly feel (perfect for a brand that prides itself on superb customer service). But I also decided to inject a little smile directly into the logotype, by redrawing the ‘H’ and ‘e’s with a little smile to reflect the brand’s warmth and personality.

 

The project was much more than a logo and new fonts however. I changed the brand red to make it warmer and brought in new bright colours to help the sub-brands stand out. I developed a photographic style that focused on customers’ warmth and HomeServe engineers’ confidence, with this being enacted over a number of photography shoots and I designed a range of brand service icons and sub-brand logos to be used across the business. I established this new look across the design of their brand communications, even designing the new van livery. However, the key component that held the brand together was the new guidelines book (with a metal cover to reflect the new vans), in which I wrote all the technical elements.