Five minutes with Patrick Waugh

Digital publisher Buro Global has revealed a new brand identity for Buro24/7, its luxury lifestyle brand, targeting the sought-after Millennial group. The new identity is a cleaner, more minimalist and sophisticated update of the previous one, matching the identity of its audience.
Patrick Waugh, group creative director at Buro Global, and designer of the new brand identity, talks about Buro’s new brand positioning, the overall rebrand, as well as the creation of the new icon, ’Buro dot.’

What was the inspiration behind the design icon known as the Buro dot design?

As a brand, we wanted to make Buro’s new identity both modern and relevant. In doing so, we felt confident about removing the ’24/7’ from the logo. We have since updated this element of the brand with Buro’s ‘dot’ symbol. This is a stylised representation of ‘time never stops’ – the hands of a clock, the sun and the moon. It represents that Buro is always live and publishing – wherever you are in the world and abstractly re-interprets the notion of 24/7 which was more literal in the previous logo.

What message does the brand’s new positioning want to convey to its audience?

The Buro24/7 rebrand comes at a time when many brands in the luxury market are visually reintroducing themselves to their audience with a new identity. Our redesign symbolises a new beginning, a new era. One that puts Buro into the centre of the global conversation of fashion, beauty, art, travel and technology. The brand’s messaging, whilst presenting a cleaner, more sophisticated identity than the previous branding, is still accessible to our Millennial audience. It’s all about striking the right balance and ensuring that it is targeted to what the Millennial really wants.

What is the design and decision-making process your company used for the rebrand?

The design process began with an intensive month of researching visuals which ultimately shaped a brand mood board. The mood board represented the DNA of what we all believe the new era of Buro was going to be. Once this persona had been decided, we began to develop hand down font for our work mark logo and then developed the dot logo, to ensure that they related and represented Buro’s identity that we drew up in our initial planning. 

How do you manage to balance making a change without alienating your stakeholders?

I was very lucky to come onto the Buro team at the time that I did. I came at a time where there was a healthy appetite for update and change. The stakeholders where both trusting and enthusiastic to see what we would do with the branding, and they fully supported our creativity and imagination in making the change. To have their support was a dream come true and gave me the creative freedom to make the brand so modern and relevant.

How does your brand differentiate itself from its competitors?

Our brand is in a unique position given that we have been operating successfully as market leaders in emerging luxury markets, such as the Middle East and Kazakhstan. It goes without saying that most of the traditional publishers such as Condé Nast are focusing on extending to emerging luxury markets, as evidenced by the recent launch of GQ in the Middle East. While our strategy may be in reverse, bringing it to the UK, we’ve built a vast knowledge of our ‘reinventors of luxury’ across our network and already work with 20 of the top luxury brands, helping them to deliver interactive experiences through digital, social and offline activities that drive awareness, consideration or purpose.

For more from Transform, follow us on Twitter @Transformsays