Wicked Audio, Inc. is a lifestyle audio company. Its brand is authentic, friendly, informal, and relatable with a wicked flair. It’s a company that’s been around since 1994. Over the years, the brand has changed and evolved. The brand guide from 2014 was outdated and needed refreshing and rebuilding. The outdated brand guide no longer reflected the true message or the look the brand had been representing for years. The new brand guide had to overcome the challenge of matching current brand material and maintain consistent guides and rules for the future. Clear messaging and direction were needed to re-align the brand and tighten its assets.

Every aspect of the brand guide was updated. But some of the biggest changes were colors, typography, graphic elements, and icon system. With photography, packaging, tone of voice, and web also defined where they weren’t before.

Notable Changes:

Typography: While two type families were defined in past brand guides, they were not followed consistently. Over the years, the brand’s needs changed, and new typefaces were introduced to solve for different solutions. It created a clunky collection for the large brand trying to meet a variety of needs. The new 2020 Brand Guide clearly defines the two most useable and flexible sans-serif type families that should be used, along with a collection of hand-drawn fonts, for all solutions. No more picking and choosing from a history of past typefaces. Another previous inconsistency was how the typefaces were used. A Structure of Type example was given to help align all aspects of typography.

Icon System: Wicked Audio’s icon library, used to define key features in their products, had been building for over a decade. No rules were in place and the icon library lacked consistency and balance. An icon system was created with 4 rules. Refreshed icons and new icons now feel balanced together and actually look cohesive.