Why we refreshed a brand before we rebranded it
When SquareWorks came to us, they already knew two things: they needed a new name, and their brand was overdue for an update. A legal dispute had made the old name untenable, but the visual identity had been a separate concern for a while. The business had shifted from a services consultancy to a software company, and the brand hadn’t followed.
What we worked through together was where exactly to focus. A full rebrand — new name, new strategy, new identity — was the right destination, but it needed time to do properly. In the meantime, there was real work to do on how SquareWorks presented itself.
Closing the gap between what they were and how they looked
The clearest starting point was the logo and visual identity. The SquareWorks name had always carried a clear idea behind it: the square as a foundational element, something structural, defined, and dependable. That thinking hadn’t fully translated into the visual identity, so we used it as the thread to pull on.
We refreshed the logo to bring that idea forward more deliberately, and built a grid system from it that gave the whole brand a new kind of clarity. Blocks of content, structured layouts, defined areas across the website, decks, and marketing collateral. Everything organised around the same underlying logic. The result was a visual language that felt conceptually grounded in the name itself, and mature enough to signal where the business had actually arrived.
Running alongside that was a shift in how the product was presented. SquareWorks had become a serious automation platform, but the visual language still leaned on the conventions of a consulting firm. Putting their flagship product Automate front and centre, through purposeful product visuals built within the same structured system, was how the brand started to really communicate what the business had become. The square grid gave the new website and marketing assets coherence. The product gave it credibility.
The work served a real purpose. The business stood more confident again, teams had something they could use, and we had a much clearer picture of what was working by the time we started developing the full rebrand.
Building from where we’d gotten to
The new brand picked up from the foundation we’d already laid. We developed the name Charted and built a strategic narrative around “Frictionless by Design”, capturing how their ERP-native architecture simplifies financial operations for finance and IT teams. That idea became the spine of their positioning, messaging, and verbal identity across marketing, sales, and product.
The visual identity brought it to life through flow and precision. The diamond shape from the SquareWorks era was kept, reimagined to carry the new direction forward rather than break from it. Charted also consolidated the company and product under a single name, replacing both SquareWorks and Automate with something cleaner and more unified. Later, once strategy and identity were in place, the website followed, restructured around the Charted positioning and rebuilt to match.
A phased approach buys you continuity. The brand evolves rather than breaks, and the people inside the business can follow that evolution rather than being asked to make a sudden leap.
What this kind of partnership looks like in practice
Part of working well with a client is being willing to meet them where they are. SquareWorks came with a clear problem and a sense of direction. What we brought was the clarity that turned that direction into a plan they could actually move through, one phase at a time.
The Charted rebrand didn’t happen despite the SquareWorks refresh. It happened because of it.
Explore the full Charted case study to see how the brand came together
