But I quickly felt conflicted for liking it.

The university community hasn’t been thrilled with the rebrand. Faculty and staff weren’t aware of the project until a few days before launch, so there wasn’t time to sell anyone on the strategy.

Nonetheless, I could hear countless people in my head hurling insults about the new shuttle design and saying they like the old design better.

This reaction made me realize how often we critique design based on personal attachment instead of whether it’s actually doing its job.

Appeal v. Performance

By liking the new shuttle design, I wasn’t implying in my head that I thought it was better or worse, just successful, and that’s the key here.

Many people think of rebrands as cosmetic, but designers know they often reflect deeper organizational change.

There are countless reasons to rebrand including your customer base shifting, a change in products and services offered, evolution and growth, a point of inflection in the company’s history, etc., but it’s rarely because “we want to change how we look.”

With a new brand strategy in place, it’s hard to justify direct comparison. These designs exist in entirely different brand systems, with different goals.

The shuttle design isn’t the point. It’s a familiar example of how we mistake comfort for quality.

Many critique design by appeal: emotional response, nostalgia, and preference.

I’m suggesting we start critiquing by performance: alignment with strategy, clarity, scalability, and longevity.

In Conquer Your Rebrand by Bill Kenney, when giving tips for internal project teams to structure their feedback for brand agencies, he said they should reframe the question from “do we like the design?” to “is this design successful?” and, importantly, why or why not?

I think that same principle applies here. We have to look at the new brand strategy and judge whether the design is successful.

Of course, at the end of the day, it’s okay to personally not like it, but deem it successful for the brand.

Good critique asks whether a design advances the brand it belongs to, not whether it preserves the one we remember.

Test it out:

Think back to some rebrands over the past year where you’ve assessed them based on appeal.

Does your thinking change if you learn about the strategy behind the rebrand and assess the new designs by performance?