Block: The Square Rebrand
Block Launch Video by Sekani Solomon
Being featured on Brand New a career highlight :)
Rebranding a multi-million dollar company, from Square to Block
My team at Square (an innovative Brand Communications team, tasked with telling brand forward stories through the mercurial art of PR and Comms) was tasked with rebranding the entire company to be Block, an umbrella company for the rest of our “blocks”. Luckily, I work with an amazing group of multi-disciplinary designers who were up for the ultimate challenge: rebrand a multi-billion dollar company, totally in secret, and your main client is Jack Dorsey.
The brand is meant to be fluid and ever-evolving, and focusing on a future-forward outlook. To accomplish this, we turned to 3D to create cinematic and surreal worlds that could represent this idea. Sekani coined the term, “Beautiful Future” which represents this mood around this brand so well. We’re open to possibilities, the brand is flexible and expressive first.
The creative direction for the new brand identity takes the geometric primitive of a block and brings it to life through a 3D first approach that always implies movement with a 90 degree twist, capturing the spirit of an ever-evolving company that will continue to grow and change over time. We see this happen with the other pillars of the brand too, from the color palette to the typefaces—they’re flexible, interchangeable and meant to be evolved and morphed over time. Instead of just one word mark, we have three, and we can see them used interchangeably. We don’t have brand colors, we have moods and textures that grow and change with time. It certainly is a beautiful future.
Design Director Jen Murse
Designers Anna Caldwell, Angie Garland + Chloe Stokes
Interactive Design + Height Neil Shankar
Design Technologist Pete Schirmer