An FTSE 100 company on a global transformation journey, industrial product and service solutions provider RS Group was looking for a new identity to reflect its restructuring, moving from a disconnected house of brands to one cohesive branded house.

The industrial industry is in a constant change which has become the new status quo – the acceleration of innovation and velocity of disruption caused by the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) where automation, Big Data and AI are becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives is hard to comprehend or anticipate. In order for businesses to survive during this period, they need to exist in a constant state of readiness for the next big pivot. This means being agile, flexible, adaptable, as well as owning your expertise to ensure survival.

We knew that we needed to create a brand for RS which was 4IR ready and digital-first, conveyed agility, adaptability, and expertise and reflected an idea that had a meaningful higher purpose. We also needed to create a brand which united RS to work together better, but which also let each part of the business tell their own story.

The team enlisted our help to develop a purposeful brand story and identity that would elevate the internal business ambition and provide cohesion and consistency across the board, creating a simpler, more holistic story.

RS required a new identity system which translated their recent transformation and provided a common thread to represent the different propositions within the new brand. Our challenge was to express RS’ distinctive balance of technological excellence and human creativity in a new identity which addressed their purpose of ‘making amazing happen for a better world’. The move to a united RS brand presented the perfect opportunity to create a new world and showcase RS’ offer in the clearest way, making it easy to understand, to explain, and to sell.

In today’s 4IR future, it will be mankind’s creativity and imagination that unlocks the true potential in technology; making connections, imagining new combinations, and shifting perspectives to create something greater. We wanted RS to become industry leaders, but in order to do that we had to find the right solutions to meet their needs and create competitive advantage for the brand. That’s where our brand idea emerged: engineering impossible. Together we can unlock potential and realise things that could scarcely be imagined in isolation. Being able to endlessly combine our technical expertise and human imagination to engineer new solutions that break the boundaries of today would help RS’ audience make their impossible, possible. It was with this brand idea that we also addressed the brand’s purpose in making amazing happen for a better world.

Once we identified our big idea, it was time to get to work in crafting the visual identity. In order to achieve the next generation of brand building and set a new leading standard within the industry, we had to create an ownable brand story to bring everyone on board, create a meaningful and purposeful identity system, and create a brand that adapts, transforms and evolves with the industry.

The first thing we did was optimise the logo for the future. The current logo was designed in a pre-digital era, but it wasn’t working anymore based on where the brand was looking to go. Simple yet vital tweaks were made to give the logo a renewed authority which was ready to take on the digital world. We reversed the colour way to give impact and gravitas and avoid the need for a key line. A refined letterform improves legibility and conveys a sense of agility and seamless service.

We began to use the distinct updated RS logo as a powerful and flexible asset, creating new perspectives and viewpoints that dramatise how RS help engineers to see the world differently, transforming their view of what is possible.

A refreshed, digital-first brand identity system was developed to better reflect the future-facing mindset of the business and set a new industry-leading standard for design. Built around a simple yet flexible shape language, the new identity aims to emphasise the human creativity and imagination at play that’s so pivotal to unlocking innovation. Our distinctive asset can be used as a window into transformed future, a stage to highlight moments of human and machine brilliance, a prism that reveals a new state, and a frame for us to demonstrate breakthroughs. Our new ‘power of perspective’ visual identity brings to life our engineering impossible story and takes us from impossible to possible.

The final result is a holistic and more cohesive identity which will drive RS’ ambition to hold a market leading position in the industry. RS has transformed into one brand that can flex its assets for each individual proposition, using the visual identity system in order to tell different stories.