What gets creatives out of bed is seeing their work out in the real world, doing its job. But these days, aiming for something that lasts feels completely out of step with how the world actually works.
As a younger designer, all I craved was to be able to populate culture with my work – on album covers, airport signage, sweet wrappers or grand art books, wherever. What I didn’t think about was how long those bits of culture might last, or should. Naively I thought they’d be there forever, permanent personal monuments to my own hubris. I still get a thrill from seeing the spine of a book I designed decades ago in the background of some flashy magazine article. (I also get the opposite feeling from seeing businesses we’ve worked with choosing to fully rebrand after only a few years, but hey.)
Speaking of permanence, I’ve just visited the reimagined Olympia in London, with whom we’ve been working for over ten years on the development of their brand identity. We even won Gold for it at the Transform Awards in back in 2022 and yet it’s only now, in 2026, that the building is ready and the place can be experienced.
From persuading Kensington Council to run more tube trains, wooing locals and investors with displays and marketing suites, to creating a development identity and then turning it into a place brand took TEN FLIPPING YEARS. It’s taken that long to see the brand cast in brass and set in concrete. And I’m thrilled again.
Seeing work in context is the powerful drive that propels creatives and yet the idea of permanence in design is at odds with how the world works today. The pace of life is accelerating and so’s the way we consume culture.
The faster and more we ingest, the more change seems to be what we need – something new.
Change means progress, more stuff. Change means we can pivot, move faster and break things.
But on another level, this means a loss of permanence, reliability and ultimately trust.
Mark Ritson calls this “the pornography of change”.
He says:
“When you take all the companies … analysed, and you put them in a quartile, the top quartile – the fattest, the slowest, the most boring, unchanging – all the way through to the bottom quartile, the ones that change all the time, what you find is that boring, fat, unchanging wins the day … But you’ve got to be more consistent. You’ve got to leave the cakes in for longer. Take more time.”
Unfortunately, time is not on marketing’s side. The average tenure of a Marketing Director is now, depending on who you read, somewhere between three and four years. More disturbingly perhaps, in 2024, 71% of all Fortune 500 CMOs were acting in that function for the very first time.
In my time I’ve watched countless visual identities rise, fall, and, in some cases, quietly endure. Trends have come and gone – the 3d logos of the ’90s, glossy web 2.0 gradients of the 2000s, flat minimalism in the 2010s – but the brands that command true recognition are rarely the ones that chase the latest fashion. They’re the ones that understand the quiet power of permanence.
71%
By permanence, I don’t mean resistance to change or blind loyalty to the past. Rather, I mean the deliberate choice to create a visual foundation strong enough to withstand the changes in culture and commerce.
A permanent identity doesn’t stand still – it anchors. It provides stability so that everything else a brand does, from product launches to seasonal campaigns, can stretch and evolve without losing its centre.
Think about the Coca-Cola script and bottle shape, the Nike swoosh, or McDonald’s golden arches. These marks are so ingrained in our visual culture that they need no explanation. Even a piece of them is instantly recognisable. That only happened because those companies committed to an identity and let time do its work.
Recognition compounded, year after year, until the design itself became synonymous with the brand.
A lesser example from our own archive is Chivas Whisky. In 2012, Pernod Ricard recognised that they were playing second fiddle to Johnnie Walker’s ‘Walking Man’. They needed a brand icon that would symbolise the world’s next favourite whisky. They were willing to take the time and effort to build recognition into a mark over time that had to represent them the world over and be robust enough for moulding into their iconic glass bottles meant to last for decades.
Our solution was a mark recognising Scotland’s saltire from William Wallace’s tombstone, the bottle cap and a Luckenbooth (heart shaped brooch) from the gates of the Strathisla distillery (the ‘heart’ whisky in Chivas’ blend). It was semiotically tested in six global markets (a very interesting read) and launched successfully. However, even with this commitment and resolute consistency over the following fourteen years, the styling of the icon we created has recently been updated. **sighs**
Recognition is the most obvious benefit of permanence. But there’s also trust. Consumers are remarkably perceptive; they notice when a brand constantly reinvents itself. They might not say it, but they feel the instability behind those changes. In my experience, when a brand changes its look every few years, it risks sending the signal that it doesn’t quite know who it is. A consistent identity, on the other hand, conveys confidence. It tells people, “You can rely on us. We’re steady. We’re here to stay.”
A consistent identity conveys confidence. It tells people, “You can rely on us. We’re steady. We’re here to stay.”
Then there’s the cultural side of things. When you stick with a look, it stops being just marketing and becomes part of everyday life. Think of the London Underground roundel – it’s not just a transport sign anymore, it is London. Or those classic orange-and-white Penguin book covers from the 1930s; they still look brilliant today.
That’s what real timeless design does, it gets under the skin of a culture. (And when I say timeless, I don’t mean Cracker Barrel).
Every time a company decides to completely overhaul its look, it costs a fortune. You’ve got to change the office signs, redesign the packaging, rebuild the website, the list goes on.
Sometimes you have to do it if you’re pivoting the business or trying to shake off negative perception. But when rebranding becomes a habit? You’re just flushing cash down the toilet and confusing your customers.
A solid, well-made identity does the exact opposite: it grows in value. Every time someone sees it, it builds on what’s already there instead of hitting the reset button.
Finally, there’s the problem of standing out. Trends are a trap. They make you feel relevant, but they also make everyone look the same.
A few years ago when all those fashion houses binned their unique logos for the exact same plain, block-text fonts? Within a season, you couldn’t tell them apart. Burberry eventually realised how daft that was and went back to their old-school, classic lettering. They remembered that their history was their actual strength.
Chasing what’s fashionable might feel safe, but it’s a quick way to become completely invisible.
It’s hard to have an emotional relationship with embedded enterprise software.
Permanence is emotional.
People don’t just recognise a brand; they relate their own lives to it. When a logo or a bottle stays the same for twenty or thirty years, it becomes part of your memories. For me, a glass bottle of Coca-Cola brings back childhood holidays abroad (while a can of Coke just reminds me of hangovers). A Rolex crown might make you think of your dad’s retirement or a massive career win.
That’s what consistency does. It builds up layers of meaning that a single ad campaign could never touch. Good luck doing that if you sell B2B tech. It’s hard to develop an emotional relationship with embedded enterprise software.
Staying the same doesn’t mean being boring. The best brands give you a solid anchor so you can actually mess about and have fun.
Google’s logo hasn’t really changed in decades, but they play with the Doodles every single day.
Absolut Vodka’s bottle shape never changes, and it’s inspired thousands of inventive campaigns.
When you have a fixed point, you can experiment without losing who you are.
At the end of the day, this isn’t even a design choice, it’s a business strategy. It proves you’re thinking long-term and that you actually know who you are. Customers and employees respect that.
Look, consistency is rarely the flashiest choice. It doesn’t grab headlines the way a massive, expensive rebrand does. But the companies that invest the time to begin with a strong foundation and who give their identity time to breathe instead of tearing it down every time a new Marketing Director walks through the door, are the ones that earn real trust.