How (and Why) We Refreshed Our Brand - The Intercom Blog

Summary

Intercom refreshed its brand after stress-testing the 2018 rebrand over several years, revealing scalability issues in illustration, color, typography, product visuals, and voice. The illustration style was difficult to replicate without a full-time illustrator, the mint-and-black color palette was constraining and at times appeared childish, and typography lacked personality. The team introduced thinner-lined illustrations with strategic usage guidelines, created a custom headline font called Honey complemented by Smile and Intercom Brand fonts, and reduced product abstraction to let the product itself do the heavy lifting. They defined voice characteristics as conversational, clear, confident, and delightful while avoiding goofy, oversimplified, flashy, or corporate tones to ensure consistent scaling. The year-long refresh was led by the internal Brand Studio, leveraging in-house talent across design, typography, and copywriting, and included an extensive brand audit.

Takeaways

1. 1

   The 2018 rebrand’s illustration style was difficult to replicate without a full-time illustrator, leading to scalability issues that prompted the refresh.

2. 2

   The team created a custom headline font called Honey to add personality and differentiate Intercom from generic tech typography.

3. 3

   Reducing product abstraction in marketing improved comprehension by showing the actual product instead of simplified visuals.

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