Hive Rebrand
The Hive brand launched more than 10 years ago, in 2012, as a single smart thermostat solution. Whilst there had been tweaks to the branding over the years, the brand had never been properly repositioned with Hive’s new ambition to make Hive the leading Net Zero brand in the United Kingdom.
The new branding needed to reflect this ambition and make potential customers feel energised, engaged and excited to be part of this energy revolution. As Hive, we wanted to create a tribe of advocates to spread the word - like Airbnb, Dyson, Apple, Spotify all did in their respective spaces.
Everything was up for grabs: the logo, colour palette, typeface, illustration style, photography and tone of voice. As a design team we were involved from the start to - together with the brand team and supported by an external branding agency for the early stages - help shape the branding. What followed was an entire redesign of the app and website in the new branding. Close collaboration with the tech and product teams meant we were able to release the newly branded app and website within a year from starting the project.
My role
As a head of design, I had to make sure the rebrand exercise would be a collaborative one; between the design team, the brand team and the (external) brand agency. I was keen to leverage the expertise and creativity of my team to make the rebrand a success. Interestingly, the rebrand was kicked off after the roadmap for the next 12 months had already been signed off. As the leader of the team I had to get the balance right and make sure we kept delivering on the roadmap, whilst also making time and space for valuable explorations.
I wanted to ensure we would end up with a strong brand identity which was practical to use by the design team and development teams and would also meet accessibility standards. A practical issue with one of the fonts that was initially proposed by the branding agency was that it was much wider than the previous font and would therefore mean it could not be swapped out as easily, meaning a lot more work for development. More importantly, testing proved that this font was found much harder to read than other options. As a result of our research and feedback, the font for body text changed to a more practical and readable font, whilst still having a distinct character.
Hive app screens before the rebrand
Hive app screens after the rebrand
Evolution of the illustration style. The old style at the top, the initial direction from the brand agency in the middle and the refined new style below.
Illustrations and motion
Two areas that required particular attention were the illustrations and motion. I made sure my team helped shape and refine the direction for both in the new branding.
The brand agency set out a high level direction for two different illustration styles. One style for ‘informative’ illustrations: mostly related to set-up and placement of eco-tech in the home. And another one for ‘emotive’ illustrations: to illustrate concepts and add warmth. Especially the informative style needed further work to get to a more refined and elegant style and take practical considerations, such as it being possible for everyone on the design team to create in our main design tool Figma, into account.
Motion was not part of the original brief to the agency, and I put my team forward to create those motion guidelines ourselves rather than outsourcing this. We started off with most of the team spending some time on initial explorations and later continued with a more focussed motion team. The work was very well received and spanned everything motion: transitions, animation of illustrations, copy and icons across all platforms. It added a lot of depth to the app and web and had a huge impact on our social videos, which had often been created with different agencies and desperately needed clearer guidelines. Our guidance given to the social team drastically improved the quality of the social content.
Results
The rebrand and design work that was part of it, was very well received, both internally and externally. Conversion for the web went up with the redesigned pages. We kept a close eye on app ratings and NPS scores for the app, with changes often leading to a dip in ratings, but both stayed steady while we rolled out the new branding.
