Refreshing new logo!

It is always a challenge to rework a logo, especially when the service or the business it represents is doing well for itself and, in fact, holds a leading position in the market. Such logo changes are often reviewed purely from the aesthetic point of view and are seen more as aesthetic adjustments to align with the contemporary visual trend, until of course there is something grossly amiss about the logo itself.
To put it on records, there was nothing grossly amiss about the logo. In fact many a users and even stakeholders loved it and identified with it. To the stakeholders it also represented numerous sleepless nights and collective efforts invested into making taxspanner a leading brand in efiling and tax planning space, in a span of few years.
So to sum it up, it was anything but an easy project to work on. There was a design limitation with respect to the colours used in the previous version of the logo. The user surveys revealed that the colours were hugely liked by many and that users also strongly associated that colour combination with taxspanner brand name perhaps due to its extensive usage over the years.
One of the key reasons to explore redesign was the continuous feedback that the words ‘tax’ and ‘spanner’ needed to be visually segregated for more clarity. The word ‘spanner’ was often getting confused with ‘planner’ hence, it was felt, that there was a need to make the word distinctly identifiable.
Many options were explored and evaluated based on aesthetics, semantics and pragmatics. As taxspanner also uses offline channels to offer its efiling services, especially to corporate customers, it was a necessity that the logo adapts well across various mediums and in different environments.
To visually segregate the two words, tax and spanner, a red arrow was introduced. This arrow effectively segregated the words, while being semantically appropriate. A metaphorical representation of the fulcrum of a spanner, the red arrow is indicative of the multiplier effect on invested effort. It represents a spanner that provides ease of use and hugely reduces the effort put in by users to fix their taxes, be it preparing and filing the income tax returns or planning of taxes for optimal financial planning. Unlike the earlier logo, the new logo uses lower case letters as it was found to be aesthetically more pleasing.
The changed logo was also interpreted on stationary and other internal and external marketing communications. The initial response to the logo has been very encouraging and we hope that this logo will stand the test of time to represent everything that taxspanner is, and strives to become.