PA logo redesign

PA Consulting (PA) needed a visual identity that exemplified its brand: ‘the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future’. Starting in January 2022, PA’s in-house Design Studio worked in sprints, delivering elements on a just-in-time basis to meet the milestones of a website transformation that ran on a parallel track towards the October deadline.
PA has hundreds of designers, scientists, and engineers, so our team needed to impress from the start, as we sought to engage expert stakeholders with regular feedback sessions.
A key element was to devise a simpler, clearer, more confident logo. ‘Freeing’ its dots to symbolise ‘moments of ingenuity’, balanced by the simple precision of the wordmark.
Where many of our competitors can outspend us massively, our old logo had certain characteristics that help it stand apart:
• Eye-catching red
• A recognisable silhouette.
It also had to be:
• recognisable and memorable
• legible
• well crafted.
We broke the logo into component parts:
• Red is a differentiator in a sea of consulting blues and greens.
• The letterforms competed against the three dots — we need to simplify.
• Give the graphic element a more intuitive meaning?
• Freeing the dots created a better sense of progression and movement. The simplified design gives the dots a more intuitive sense of 'ingenuity' — a flow of ideas. We called these dots 'Moments of ingenuity'.
Benchmarking against our design principles [some of which are listed here] we feel we have created a design that truly reflects the best of PA. We see attributes such as:
• Bold
• Trustworthy
• Optimistic
• Authentic.
When we asked 16-17 year olds — part of the 'Speakers for Schools' series of workshops PA deliver — “What do these dots signify?” — they arrived at some delightful conclusions such as:
• "The circles are different sizes, suggesting inclusiveness, and all ideas being welcome."
• "I think it represents different ways of thinking, different peoples and ideas — as well as representing a sense of creativity and diversity."