A few years ago, the team at TBG decided to update and reinvigorate our own brand identity. We wanted it to be something that felt more reflective of where the industry was heading; that would allow clients and customers to be able to view our work in newer and more exciting channels; and that felt aesthetically dynamic, really reflective of “who we are.”

As part of that exercise, we chose purple to anchor our new color palette. We liked it. It felt different. It was bold but playful. Informal but confident. It sounded like us. (It also helped that it’s our CEO’s favorite. But we digress.)

Now, at the time, purple as a brand color was rather unique. Especially for a player in the B2B/B2G space. But brand is about being true to who you are, and how you embrace that story. So purple it was (and is).

Turns out we were on to something.

Styles of design tend to evolve. Skeumorphism gave way to flat design which is now bowing to neomorphism. And while these seem like technical terms for geeky designers… they are also important in how they influence not just how brands look to their customers, but how customers in turn navigate and interact with those brands across their touchpoints, from web sites to presentations to recruitment events.

And colors, too, can have their moments. As with design trends, colors can become “hot.”  In fact, every year Pantone releases their choices for “color of the year,” and for 2022 it is a color whose “courageous presence encourages inventiveness and creativity.”

Purple.

Well, “periwinkle.” Informally called “Very Peri”… or, in Pantone parlance, the decidedly less romantic-sounding “P17-3938.” No surprise, perhaps, that purple is being embraced and applied on leading (often digitally-forward) brands like HBO. Or Roku. Or Twitch.

Bottom line: many things obviously factor into re-invigorating a brand, and all brands have foundational challenges that their brand aesthetic should inherently help start addressing. The emotional and rationale must always help each other, and brands today know that the levers they can pull to help make that happen, are many. From strategy, to design, to form factor, to message, to font, to media channel, to timing, to… well, perhaps a little dash of periwinkle.