Blake Howard 0:00

This episode of A Change of Brand is brought to you by Standards, the no-code platform for building web-based brand guidelines with total design control. Keep listening to learn more. Hey, also, this podcast is produced by Matchdig, the brand identity house for leaders taking bold steps towards a radically relevant brand.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 0:21

a direct line or the approval from the top, then lots of doors will open because they need to open. There won't be sort of a huge, immense resistance from anyone. Everyone wants to kind of be a good team player and be part of this. I think what happened is whatever amount of resistance got overtaken by the fact that from June to September, so three months, they needed to launch an entire new global brand. And so it's like, okay, well, how do you make that? We

Blake Howard 0:53

don't have time for resistance. It's time to go. Hey everyone, welcome to A Change of Brand, a show featuring behind-the-scenes stories of rebrand, glory, drama, or disaster. I'm your host, Blake Howard, and here with me is our co-host, Tracy Clark.

Tracy Clark 1:13

Hey Blake, how's it going?

Blake Howard 1:14

It's season six, can you believe it? No, what? That's crazy. Season six. I mean, season five was pretty good, but season six is here, and I'm... I'm pretty excited.

Tracy Clark 1:29

I'm pumped. What are we going to talk about?

Blake Howard 1:33

Well, today we've got a good one to kick off with. It's about PayPal. I have a pretty good PayPal story.

Tracy Clark 1:39

Oh, really? Like a fun PayPal story? Yeah,

Blake Howard 1:43

yeah. You know, I try to kick off these episodes with like a little anecdotal firsthand experience. And several years ago, I became a major PayPal fan. My wife and I were looking for a new mattress. We had a mattress that we had loved. It got damaged in a move. And we went on this awful experience of buying new mattresses. You know, like you get a Casper, it gets sent to your house. so you open it up it's too firm then you're like i have a giant 300 pound mattress what am i going to do with it i have to send it back it gets sent back long story short we went through like four or five mattresses we found the exact previous mattress that we had that got damaged and we ordered it from a random site but we used paypal to purchase it they sent us the mattress It was in the right box, but it was 100% the wrong mattress, not the right mattress.

Tracy Clark 2:36

Oh, no. And

Blake Howard 2:37

we called them. They didn't answer. We emailed them. They didn't respond. And then we realized, like, this is not a very legitimate website and that we were kind of hosed. So we called our friends at PayPal. And guess what? They refunded us our money. And then they went after that mattress company.

Tracy Clark 2:55

You got the full amount? Full amount.

Blake Howard 2:57

PayPal for the

Tracy Clark 2:57

win. All right.

Blake Howard 2:59

They were our pals. So I'm a fan. I'm excited about today. And, you know, this rebrand in particular, it got a little bit of blowback. Some people really criticized the work and felt like it was just too simple. And it was part of this larger trend of brands stripping out all of the personality. And it does lead to this question of like, whoa. Is simplicity a bad thing or a good thing? Or can you be too minimal? I'm excited to figure out, like, the role of brand and how particularly they figured it out in this case.

Tracy Clark 3:33

I mean, you're talking about trust. And we do hear in our world the talk about trust a lot, especially as more company leaders are getting better at connecting the dots between brand and, like, business strategy and brand partners need to understand long-term vision. PayPal is also a really trust-heavy space. You really need to trust a finance partner, right? A money partner. Not to mention they have a ton of audiences that put their trust in them, right? I mean, so you're a consumer, right? There's also employees, there's merchants, there's investors. So yeah, I think trust is huge in our space these days.

Blake Howard 4:08

A couple of things that I think we are going to learn today is that sometimes insane deadlines are good and that trust really in a creative process is everything. And can some things be too simple or is simplicity a good or bad thing? We're going to explore that topic today. And we also have a little cameo. We have a cameo about Will Ferrell.

Tracy Clark 4:29

Oh, yeah?

Blake Howard 4:30

Yeah. He's not on the show, actually. Oh, all right. But he is in this story. You will hear his name mentioned in this story. So let's get into it. You ready?

Tracy Clark 4:40

Yeah, I'm ready.

Blake Howard 4:42

Why don't you give us a little more backstory and go ahead and get us briefed in.

Tracy Clark 4:51

What does it mean for a tech trailblazer to go back to basics? In 2024, PayPal launched a visual rebrand with Pentagram that dropped its overlapping double P monogram and bright gradients in favor of a flatter, cleaner, more modern identity. The new look is unmistakably digital, responsive, legible, and streamlined. But for a brand that helped define online payments, the change sparked debate. Had PayPal sharpened its presence or lost its soul? Founded in 1998 and launched as part of a merger between Confinity and X.com, yes, that's Elon Musk's early digital finance venture, PayPal became synonymous with online transactions, eBay purchases, and the early gig economy. It was one of the first true fintech brands, building trust around speed, security, and access long before fintech was a buzzword. Its brand followed suit, evolving from the utilitarian serif of its startup days to the more tech-forward 2007 refresh. And then again in 2014, when Fuse Project introduced a tighter logotype and the now iconic double P symbol. Throughout the 2010s, PayPal used confident, people-first advertising to cement its position as both friendly and forward-thinking, from campaigns like Powering the People Economy to the Super Bowl spots like New Money, which formed the company as an alternative to outdated financial systems. Now, fast forward to 2024, and the landscape is way more crowded and more corporate. PayPal's rebrand leans into simplicity, aiming for authority in a field it once helped invent— But reactions were mixed. Some saw a confident evolution while others lamented a loss of warmth and distinctiveness. What happens when a two-decade fintech pioneer embraces minimalism? And is the balance between legacy and boldness harder to strike when you go from disruptor to ubiquity? Let's find out.

Blake Howard 6:59

Alright, let's talk about the new PayPal brand identity. Hopefully you've already seen it. If not, you can go to achangerbrand.com where we have it featured. The rebrand marks a stark change in the visual history of the brand. The new custom type PayPal Pro is kind of the star of the show. It's a customized version of Futura and is bold and slightly unexpected in the fintech space. Another big change is the use of the familiar overlapping P symbol. It's still around, but kind of demoted. It's decoupled from the word mark and just used separately. There's some really fun motion in the work as well that gives kind of the simplicity, a lot of energy and life. And even though not everyone found its simplicity charming, there was one person who was really into it.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 7:47

So my name can be pronounced two ways. The way I grew up, uh, And then the way I pronounce it nowadays in New York and in the States, it's Andrea Trabucco Campos. But people call me Andrea. And I'm a partner at Pentagram, a graphic and type designer. And in PayPal, I sort of function both as the partner in charge and the creative director. as well as also part of the design team, which is sort of a role that I take on in many of the projects that we lead at the studio. You know, this is a big, a

Blake Howard 8:29

big story that we're going to get into a lot of work, very complex. If you had to title it like a headline, how would you summarize it in like a single headline? Nothing like starting off with a really hard question. Hey, Andrea, tell me what's the meaning of life? Let's

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 8:52

just get into it. You know the next 45 minutes of this conversation? Can you just summarize it at the very start? Can you design the cover before we know the content of the book? That's right, yeah. I would say it's building it as it flies. at a very high speed with a very close collaboration with PayPal and every single other entity around it.

Blake Howard 9:25

Do you remember the very first time you heard about the opportunity? You know, typically the way it works is you get an email or back in the day used to be more phone calls, but someone reaches out and says, Hey, Pentagram, we have an opportunity. Do you remember when that first happened?

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 9:43

Yeah. Well, I had just joined as a partner at Pentagram in the New York office. And one of my partners, Michael DeRude, had a longstanding sort of relationship with the former Verizon CMO, Diego Scotti, who was about to move to PayPal as the general manager. And Michael is in a transitional period from being a partner with a team in the New York office into sort of a consulting partner. So he's still a full partner. He's still part of the office. We have the amazing kind of luck to sort of speak to him and use him as a soundboard and get all of the experience that he has. But he kind of stopped taking on projects. And this was one of them. I had worked with Michael many years before as a designer at Pentagram on MasterCard. I was part of a different team, Luke Heyman's team, and Luke Heyman and Michael Beroud came together to work on MasterCard. And as part of that process, I got to know Michael pretty well and, you know, was really sort of the years that I spent as a designer at Pentagram were really formative. So Zoom passed, you know, a bunch of other chapters in my career, like opening a studio in New York City for Design Studio and running it as a creative director and designer. Then going to Gretel, doing kind of the same role of creative direction and design. I get called to become a partner. And so I joined. And as I joined, this move from Verizon to PayPal happens. And Michael involves me and we start sort of talking about it with Diego and sort of really understanding what the future of PayPal could hold. Diego has a very interesting, I would say, I would even venture to say visionary, because the way he looks at sort of the brands that he's been operating within is, is quite connected to culture. He's looking at them not just through their business function, which you need to understand, not just through their makeup at a structural level, their presence, but their opportunity, what they could do, how they could become. And our earliest conversations were really around that. Where is PayPal at that point in time? I sort of did a full audit of everything that they had done. And we just started having an informed conversation about the space that they were in, the moment in time they were sort of occupying, and the cultural moment in time. And often, those are the three layers of depth that you can i get into um it's sort of the company the context and the culture around it and the context involves competition but also you know aspirational brands around them and so on um and and it was through those conversations that we started sort of thinking about what is a speculative future for paypal

Blake Howard 13:07

were they talking to other groups at that point or was it was it just kind of a single conversation with pentagram

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 13:15

it was a single conversation with pentagram There were definitely other interests from other ends of the business to kind of look at other studios, but there's a trust. And I think that maybe we have a bit forgotten this part that all great works, all of the great projects that happen in the world, have to rely on trust. Trust between the client and the studio or agency that they're working with. And often trust between individuals within those settings. I tend to think of these as very much like collaborations. I don't call clients sort of my client. I really sort of try to embody the idea that we're collaborating on something, even at the scale. And it changes the entire relationship because it makes it so much a little bit more of a back and forth you're not sort of doling knowledge you're kind of actually trying to listen and understand because they have the keys to something that you don't

Blake Howard 14:19

so you do that audit and i loved the way you put it the the context the culture and then i forget the first c company maybe yeah yeah so you're trying to figure out all right What's the lay of the land? And was the, out of that, was the problem to solve really clear? Like, did you have an insight where you're like, okay, here's the real challenge? Or did they already have kind of a problem that they were bringing to you to solve?

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 14:46

No, they just had the sense that like, look, this is a really important brand in the world still. And there are some facts that are really hard facts in terms of digital payments globally. PayPal is the most trusted by far. There's no other payment system, including sort of Apple Pay, which is just sort of a wrapper for a lot of things. You know, the Apple Card is one of the things that they offer, but PayPal still remains to this day as this global presence in digital payments. So there was that fact. There was the fact that they were also the first to digital payments. They pioneered this. There were really interesting people company to begin with, and they were pushing technology out. That sort of ethos had sort of solidified into being comfortable with the things that they were doing. So Diego came in and at the same time that Alex Chris, the new CEO, was sort of part of that, part of sort of this renewal at PayPal and the vision that uh alex really has established from a business and innovation sense and really pushing like diego from a brand and business opportunities but alex like has the savvy and um really the the intuition of where to go next well this is the state of things as it has been and you know they have a really well put together brand Gretel actually had done it they it's it's absolutely designed as a system it functions it can get a little repetitive they were using sort of the same colors and same things it is not aspirational it is not one of the top 25 brands that everyone would kind of look at and sort of find sort of inspiring. And it didn't have the kind of flexibility that would allow them to take a sort of a big media spin. And so early on, those conversations were happening of, okay, how do we shift the way the brand currently feels into from like FinTech, let's say, and corporate FinTech into a lifestyle brand? I think from the get-go, this was the conversation. It's one of the most trusted brands. It was one of the most innovative brands. They can be that again. And they can be a big cultural player, just like any on that top list of brands in the world. So how do we make it?

Blake Howard 17:23

Yeah, and it seems like establishing that shift from fintech to lifestyle opens up the aperture of design range and sort of starts to... plant the seed of like, what does that look like? Because something that's more in the category of like B2B fintech is going to send you down a certain route. But saying no, this needs to be in the upper echelon of just inspiring brands out in the market in general. That's more of a lifestyle brand that gives you a lot of freedom. So where did you go from there? Like once that sort of initial idea or insight or strategic direction was kind of shared? What happened next?

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 18:01

Well, once we identified that, we started sort of doing a design exercise of speculative kind of brand identity futures, I would call it. And it's very much sort of, it was a way to investigate how the brand identity could evolve and where it could go. There were some sort of business vision kind of documents that were shared with us. We kind of extracted a bit and created a bit of the creative strategy to create a foundation to do the exploration. But the task was clear is how do you shift and preserve some of the equity that PayPal has had visually, but shifted drastically into this new space where there can be a way more flexible than they are. And so it's purely, you know, as any graphic design or brand identity kind of exercise would go, you start from the symbol, the logo, the typefaces. And there are some things that were sacred objects. The PayPal symbol, which we now call the monogram, and I'll explain that in a second, the monogram needed to stay. it couldn't kind of change from where it is drastically because it has a lot of equity and it has almost a decade old kind of history. So that object was important to understand how you would evolve it, but everything around it could change. And so we sort of explored different steps starting from, in these evolutions at this scale, you have to look at closer into where it is now or where it was then and then further and further and further and further. And in that process, you generate basically different directions. And you start discovering what actually, what opportunities you can sort of generate by shifting the typist, shifting the color, shifting, you know, moving away from the graphic elements. And so we did that, and then we sort of had conversations around those directions. And I think certain things were starting to feel right. At that point, Futura was not in the picture, but something close to Futura, another typist called Kabel, which is a concurrent around that time, when Futura starts that is drawn in 1920s by Paul Renner. There's this other typeface that's also geometric. It's also a sans, but it's a bit friendlier. It has a couple of quirks. And I was using something by General Type, which is a foundry in France called Radion, which is sort of a revival of that typeface. And it was feeling great. And we learned a ton of things from that exercise. But at some point, the realities of being in this new environment for that core team and leadership sort of became more than apparent that it wasn't the exact moment to take on the full rebrand then. So after sort of this exercise of exploring We did start sharing it with other ends of PayPal and having discussions around, is this the right typeface? Is this the right set of colors? What are the requirements? And we spoke to the product leadership and the brand team leadership. And it really started sort of becoming more real. But as I said, after an initial period of a couple of months, it sort of just slowed down.

Blake Howard 21:37

In a big project like this, momentum is everything. Like pushing a boulder up a hill, getting budget approval or executive leadership buy-in is everything. And all could be lost if it stalls out too much. Andrea went on to say that even though they lost the momentum on the bigger rebrand, they were able to stay connected on other projects like designing the look and feel for an awards program and a few others. These smaller assignments kept that relationship strong and allowed them to evolve the brand from the inside out. And like a late night doom scroll, they kept getting deeper and deeper within the PayPal ecosystem. And eventually the main rebrand effort returned.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 22:21

Yeah, no. So in the initial work, we just, we got to a point where certain things were selected and certain things were actually feeling more right. But I think in the, you know, when you pause things, especially that thread, you gain clarity. And so when you look back at it, the typeface that we had chosen, it wasn't feeling right. It sort of had a tone that maybe was too playful. And PayPal has, I think, struggled as a brand to define its proximity to people. And what I mean by that is that it's a It's a brand that is for everyone, right? Like everyone can use it and it's welcoming to everyone. But I think what they've struggled with is the idea of becoming kind of welcoming in a visual way. Like, how do you do that? And how friendly are you? You know, think of the name PayPal. the PAL needs to be defined. Are you sort of a PAL as in a neighbor that I once in a while kind of rely on and so on? Or are you my PAL, like literally one of my best friends that I kind of can have a conversation? That texture of PAL is connected to the texture of the brand identity. And so I think defining that in a typographic space, for instance, it's like, I think the early work was very much like, sort of, hey, I'm your best friend, I'm here, like, quirky, and I'll tell you jokes, and I'll be there. And I think as we sort of restarted the project of the brand identity, we sort of had the clarity that, okay, this is a bit too friendly and a bit too playful. We need to elevate quite a bit and sort of become a bit more aspiring. And that's when Futura came back into the picture. You sort of can speak about it in so many ways, right? Like you could say, look, we did an incredible amount of strategy, blah, blah, blah. And then it led to these set of things and so on. But ultimately, you're still kind of deciding on the same elements that everyone needs to use. You're designing on a typeface, you're designing on a color system, you're deciding on a motion system, a way in which compositions, layouts work. All of these decisions compound into an attitude. And the attitude is kind of the most critical thing you could try and design. In our case, Futura, which is sort of a typeface that is almost 100 years old, it was released in 1927, has been a participant in culture for that length of time. And it has been, you know, it's way older than Helvetica, for instance, and it's been baked into every single end of culture. It's been used by major filmmakers and also fashion houses. It's a typeface that lives in many different places. including the moon, because when Apollo 11 was like sort of designed, all the plaques, everything about it, the patches, everything had Futura in it. So it's a typeface that literally has been sort of permeated the globe and also the moon, I guess, sort of we've traveled abroad with it out of the sphere. So It's a really significant tech phase. And when you're sort of deciding on that, I think the initial audit of the space was really critical. Everyone that is in that space is using either a grotesque, which is a sense of like a helvetica derivative or even precursor to your helvetica. So they all are using a version of that. just to really dumb it down in a way. And nobody was using this geometric kind of sans-serif like Futura. And when you look at the top 30 brands, there's very few and far between. So from even just an imprint, a typographic imprint, you have an opportunity to distance this brand from everyone else. But that is not the only thing. you can do, like, there's a whole life around it that we dove into. That's just the critical decision early on that from that initial work, then sort of led to really understanding why we should make the decisions that we made. The typeface was one piece. And although it seems like so atomic, as an element, it's the core foundation of communication. But it's grounded by the strategic intent that they're a brand that should feel trustworthy. Well, Techface has been around for 100 years. Optimistic. There's a basic geometry. Everyone can access this, these forms. And sort of simple. Those are the three kind of core principles that were guiding lots of the work and lots of the decision making at the top level. sometimes is actually a chorus of decisions. It's not just one sort of bullet that kind of cuts through. It's actually a vision of an intent that we're moving into a lifestyle kind of space, and we need a leaner and really well calibrated system. And so how do you obtain that? Well, you need to do these evaluations. Number one, you need to make sure that whatever way you're communicating words that it's unique and stands apart from everything. And that the second thing is that whatever color imprint you have also is unique and stands apart from everything. The question on the yellow plus blue was a big one. We explored changing the yellow into orange. We explored changing it all together into an adjacent to blue, which something like a green or a teal. And so we looked at an extensive amount. And then at some point, sort of just realized that, well, there's an issue with the symbol and how it was sort of treated before with color, is that the top P and the bottom P weren't really creating a great amount of color contrast. The idea is that the top P in the previous logo kind of felt like it was sitting on top of the bottom P. They weren't overlapping and creating something new. They were actually... kind of just pasting on top of each other. And so by correcting that, we introduced a lighter blue in the bottom P, and then a medium blue in the center, and then a dark blue, which was an evolution of the blue that they had. By doing that, you create something that in color theory is called continuous contrast, which is a very similar theory that we applied to MasterCard. It's just a simple position making from color that Two colors can have a third color in the middle that creates the idea that the two colors have overlapped in some way. And so by doing that, we sort of introduced the new color system. And by just that, there's three blues. PayPal has always been blue. And they were the first in the digital payment system. Well, why not double down on that? Why not create a system that uses blue as the underpinning element?

Blake Howard 29:55

How are you engaging with PayPal along this journey? Are these really quick, small shares and you're getting alignment with PayPal? Is everything you just went through, was that a big milestone presentation or was it small breadcrumbs where this is just coalescing as you

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 30:16

go? No, there was a big presentation. Actually, in that time of the pause, a sort of an excellent new player joined the picture. They hired a new CMO, who's the current CMO, Jeff Seeley, who came from a history of being in other sort of brands in that space, like Cash App, for instance, and had a great understanding of brand and design and so on. Michael and I were actually in England and we had the presentation ready and so on. And we flew back to New York and straight from the airport into the PayPal headquarters and met with Diego and Jeff and just presented sort of three routes of this renewed kind of vision. And in presenting that, we had the first one That was exactly what it is now. The second one, which played a lot with angles and the idea that people could commit to that slant that they had in the name. And what if the entire system is just sort of about speed and connection and so on. And then a third one that played with ideas of openness and sort of that strategic intent. Surely enough, we start going through the first one and go, go, go. And, you know, you're sort of reading the room and there's like a good reaction. We end on the summary slide of the first one and we still have two more to go. One of them stands up and sort of just offers their hand. They're like, you guys did it. To me and Michael. And it was like. It was kind of a surreal moment. This must be a joke. And surely enough. It wasn't. This was in June. Of 2024. And. They had decided. As a business. They had made this business decision. Of doing a large media buy. By September. And launch a campaign called. PayPal everywhere in which they would transcend the digital space and go into the physical space. And so with this sort of deadline looming, they were feeling like none of the pieces of the previous identity were working in their favor to communicate this new ideas and energy and sort of presence and culture. They had also made a deal with Will Ferrell at that point. And it's like things were lining up, but the visual tools and the brand identity that I had was not Diego and Jeff Sealy. And they kind of talked through it a little bit. And then they were like, well, let's see the rest, you know, and sort of we go through the rest. And I'm just accelerating as fast as I can through everything. There's nothing to see like, you know, but we do get to a place where that decision is made in that room.

Blake Howard 33:23

Just like that, Andrea and the team are in business. The PayPal execs were not messing around. They were hitting add to cart and checking out right away. And the pros at Pentagram weren't going to talk past the sell. This is one main benefit from a tight timeline. Go too fast and yeah, you shortchange the creative process, maybe some buy-in or overall quality, but go too slow and you risk losing momentum. And somewhere in the sweet spot, is the deal of the day, decisiveness and a little pressure. Okay, speaking of time, it's time for a quick break. When we come back, we get more into this tight timeline and how Andrea feels about some of the online criticism. All that and more after the break. What if your brand guidelines were as easy to edit as a doc? or as precise as your design files and you didn't need a single line of code. That can't be true, you're saying. It's not possible. Well, guess what? It is. And that's where standards comes in. The no-code platform made just for brand guidelines. From pre-built outlines and asset hosting to advanced permissions and automation, it gives you total control and zero development headaches. Whether you're a nimble studio or a massive in-house team, Standards scales with you. Check it out at www.standards.site, that's S-I-T-E, and finally, bring some order to the brand chaos. Again, that's standards.site.

Tracy Clark 35:07

Hey everyone, I want to take a quick minute and give a hat tip to Matchstick. It's where I work and our producing partner for this show. We specialize in helping growing brands take their identity to the next level. If you need help clarifying your message or standing out in the market, be sure to visit us at matchstick.com. That's M-A-T-C-H-S-T-I-C dot com. And if you're enjoying this and other episodes, be sure to tell a friend or leave us a review. Okay, back to the show.

Blake Howard 35:43

When we left off, Andrea and Michael Beirut hit pay dirt with an unbelievably fast executive approval immediately in the room on round one. And this is rare in my experience. Often clients need days or weeks of deliberation or litigation to socialize and get feedback from colleagues and staff and family members and it can go on and on. So the speed of this was slightly shocking to me. But what was funny is it didn't seem that rare to Andrea. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong or he's just doing something right. He actually had two insights on why he felt like it went that way for him.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 36:21

These two factors are something to talk about. One is the trust that I spoke about before, right? Trusting collaborations that can be really powerful and that trust It needs to be unwavering in a way. And then the other factor is decisiveness, not hesitating in situations where you could be hesitating. And if I were to describe PayPal before sort of this group of leadership came in, they were hesitating all the time. Like they were second guessing. And it's because you don't have a clarity of vision. When you have that, then you're like, okay, how do I make it? Okay, I need to make this decision, this other decision, this other decision. And you also start understanding that not every decision is going to be perfect, but you have the chance to kind of tweak it as you go. In the case of the identity, of course, it's like a much larger discussion because it kind of impacts everything. And so changing the logo, changing the colors has an implication all the way down to the checkout button, which is millions and millions and millions of dollars. I think the intent in that room was, okay, let's do it. And so right after that meeting, I was supposed to go back to the office and to the pentagram office in Gramercy. And surely enough, they were like, okay, can you jump on the phone with publicists and so on? And so just onboarding everyone to a round one identity that that was you know i mean the i'm sure like many other studios but you know i'll speak for myself like round ones look real but you know there's still things to figure out because they're still round two three applications yeah they're around one

Blake Howard 38:07

well even if you land the the initial like even if you get a yes on the initial round and they say like we like it There's typically so much nuanced little work to build it all out that, you know, you don't get like an official approval for months later. I think it's so interesting that the decision was made. You have an executive buy-in, which is the hard, usually that's the top of the mountain. That's the hardest thing to achieve. But in this case, you had it right away and then they were like, go. And then you had to get everyone else on board. Was there resistance as you did that? Like, were people questioning you? Should the symbol be locked up with the mark? Are you sure it should be separated? Are you sure this is the right color? As you tried to align other groups, other teams, did you get any resistance as you were sort of sharing it out?

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 38:55

Well, I think there was a clarity around why those decisions were happening, right? So number one, the decision to unlock the usual tech kind of couplet of symbol plus wordmark which is true of Spotify, Airbnb, sort of these tech giants that created brands that really worked, worked that relationship from a logo perspective. The decision to decouple this came from an insight on sort of just general culture. You have fashion houses, car makers, and tons of other types of hardware brands that use their logo for Like when I say logo, I mean the word mark. Use the word mark for communication and then the symbol for the product that they sort of are creating. I would say the things that were kind of challenging were maybe the typeface to a certain degree. The proportions of Futura are very different to today's standards compared to any number of other typefaces that are used today. And so The question became, you know, do we commission a text version, a sort of a UI version, which in fact we did. And we're currently kind of working through and will be released this year and then implemented into the product soon. The product team is currently testing it and so far it's been just great. It kind of creates this continuity from the top level. where we use PayPal Pro, the custom type that is based on Futura, to PayPal Pro UI, which can really perform and outperforms actually SF, But we've been working really closely with the Type Foundry line two, which has made some of the greatest hits in contemporary sort of culture of type. And they're really excellent. And so this is the first time in the history, in the hundred year old history, where a text version of Futura is worked. It's a really tricky kind of very technical and so on, very nerdy. So I'll spare you those details. But the attitude that Futura achieves is because of its proportions, of course. As soon as you start changing that, the attitude changes. But we've managed to kind of work through a version that actually sort of addresses all the concerns. Direction is approved. We go and let's make it. The first question was like, well, look, this is not a great kind of typeface for product as it stands today, you know, and we we've sort of navigated the decisions around that. And there's a little bit of resistance, but not I wouldn't say like a stopping point. And the thing that happens when you're speaking, I think in the best projects that have been on where the true transformations of brands, like this one, if you have a direct line or the approval from the top, then lots of doors will open because they need to open. There won't be sort of a huge, immense resistance from anyone. Everyone wants to kind of be a good team player and be part of this. I think what happened is whatever amount of resistance got overtaken by the fact that from June to September, so three months, they needed to launch an entire new global brand. And so it's like, okay, well, how do you make that? We

Blake Howard 42:28

don't have time for resistance. Yeah, it's time to go. It was go time indeed. They had just a few months left to figure it all out. So they had weekly collaborative sessions with the core brand team to iron out different elements within the system like specific values of the blues or what blues could be used where and why. They did some testing which I thought was interesting to validate which color combinations perform the best and how the PayPal button should evolve. Luckily for them, the new color direction and the simple word mark, surprisingly, outperformed every other iteration of the previous brand identity. This is also when they started to explore the motion system as well. They were inspired by common payment gestures, like the tap and pay, and how they could suggest that with the two overlapping Ps in the monogram. They explore the idea of flips, like when you flip your credit card or your debit card over to get the CVV, or other common digital gestures and motions such as swipes. Fast forward a few months, Pentagram, PayPal, and many other agencies practically moved heaven and earth to launch in September of 2024. The new brand identity debuted with an all-new PayPal credit card and this fun spot with Will Ferrell by BBH USA.

Tracy Clark 43:54

Did you just pay with PayPal? Yeah. Now you can use it in stores and the cashback's wild.

Speaker 00 44:00

Whoa.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 44:05

Are you guys feeling this?

Speaker 00 44:06

I want to pay with you everywhere. You get 5% cashback on any category you choose.

Blake Howard 44:11

The news coverage started immediately. From fast company to creative boom to brand new, mock-ups of out-of-home ads, smartwatches with motion, shopping bags, and a fun little launch video populated those stories. And faster than a one-click checkout, the criticism came. And all in all, it was mostly an attack on simplicity. Listen to some of these headlines. PayPal has a new logo that makes it look just like

Speaker 04 44:40

everything

Blake Howard 44:40

else. A symptom of a troubling cultural shift.

Speaker 04 44:43

This is one of the times the logo really, really didn't need changing.

Blake Howard 44:51

Critics sort of put it in the same camp as other brands that have stripped out personality or oversimplified their brand assets, like GoDaddy, Petco, or Johnson & Johnson. Of course, I had to get Andrea's take on some of this criticism.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 45:07

Paula Sher says something that I think I found really powerful. The value of a new brand identity is not in the moment of its release. It's actually how it evolves over time, right? And so if you look at some of the most powerful identities that have ever been made, they've grown over time. And there are somewhat of organisms, visual organisms that can adapt, but have a core sense of self. I think we've done this here, and it's evolving, and it's distinct from everyone else around it. You can't ask for more than that. Sometimes we just get enamored by the bells and whistles of an animation or some great art direction in a film. It's not that. These are the tools, and the tools are so simple and yet flexible and powerful, and they can do a lot. So there's that one piece that I think, to me, time is going to really... mark the success of this and i think in time in a very different way than other people because i my partners are some of them are in their 60s their 70s they've been in the industry for 30 plus years um and that gives you a different sense i'm not trying to compete with like you know the rest that is like just thinking year to year trying to release whatever like I'm thinking of things that last. And I want to, and I think at the core of Pentagram, we think of building things that will stand the test of time. The other thing is that there's this idea that simplicity is a little bit scorned, flattening things, right? There's this whole like kind of meme of like, oh, all these logos changed from this to Sans Serifs and so on. And I think to some degree, we should be vigilant about this, right? When Burberry changed from their previous logo to the second previous logo to like the Sans Serif version, probably was a misstep. There's a huge reason why these kind of serifs and the history of Burberry specifically associated with that is really powerful and should be evolved. So going into geometric sans or humanist sans actually is not that interesting. It's understandable, but it's not that interesting. And Hence, the step beyond that, they sort of changed back into a redrawn version of an original sort of Burberry serve. It looks fantastic. It's amazing. And then the whole graphic system around it is great. So as a brand identity, they've kind of reactivated something that was unique to them. If you look at PayPal, they didn't have this sort of long history of like kind of... i don't know beautiful kind of marks that are very distinct it was an italicized version of a generic kind of geometric sense kind of it's in some ways when the criticism came of the new identity has flattened everything else that came before it's like well look at what was before it's you know it's as i said a very solid identity especially the the last one that gretel did but It's not revolutionizing visual culture in any possible way. It doesn't have this whole history of existence and why it matters to exist that way. And so I think, to me, all of these kind of critical views miss one point, which is easily visible by this. If you do the thought experiment of, say, Apple doesn't exist or exists in a different form, and Apple releases their brand identity today, They just you see it on brand new and you sort of see here's the logo. It's an evolution of the thing that came before. And then here's the set of type is San Francisco. And and then you see sort of it's black and white. It's all minimal. It's all done this way. The apps look exactly the same way. The website's kind of and then there's good art direction here and there. You see that and you're going to say, well, this is too simple. It's not a great identity. It's not good. And, yeah, of course, like we want as a graphic designers, we want to make things explode. And like, you know, we want to make things that kind of make turn your head turn. The thing is, a graphic system sometimes like a brand identity system doesn't need to do that. It can be the vehicle onto which maybe the window onto which you can project incredible things. ideas just like apple does right like apple uses art direction and photography and motion to really activate these things but the brand itself is very slim and so what we've created very intentionally so is the simplest version of that identity

Blake Howard 49:53

that moment that they were decisive started probably back in the mastercard project where They were building trust and the reputation of Pentagram and your work and Michael's work. So going into this project, every little moment was an opportunity to build trust. And it led up to that presentation. So it wasn't like you just walk in and you have that trust and the work's killer and they love it and they choose it. It's the progression. It's the journey. of every little touch point along the way, having a point of view saying how important design is and how to think about, you know, selecting a typeface that's got a history and has a cultural relevance today. And there's a distinct opportunity in the market. You know, it's all of those little strategic ideas that layered up to that moment. And I think that some designers think you just got to crush that one meeting, but it's, it's all, all of the, the interactions all the way up to it. And I just think that's something that, pull out and just kind of acknowledge yeah

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 50:53

yeah i think like that's that's a really well stated uh the other way i've heard it and i want to attribute it like i'm big into crediting sources um and so um it's it's uh actually brian collins who says um don't sort of i mean i'm i'm gonna paraphrase here um he says it's not about the big yes it's about the hundred yeses, small yeses, right? And it's exactly what you described. And I think just intuitively speaking, being in rooms with Michael, being in rooms with other Pentagram partners, you sort of learn, I think almost by osmosis, that it's always just a conversation. You're always just talking. in a dialogue with someone else, whether it's a room of 20 people or it's a room with three people, you are literally thinking through the possibilities in the future. And so the better you listen and the more you sort of deeply embed yourself into that context, the more you can do the thing that you're known for, which is create a visual equivalent of the opportunity that Liza had. I think the trust is built from all of those, as you said, little moments. I mean, it's sort of in conversation every time anything is kind of shared. It's reflected upon and then sort of, I think, played back in ways that push it forward.

Blake Howard 52:40

All right, y'all, it's time to check out and wrap up this change story. Sometimes a little timeline pressure isn't a bad thing. In this case, it helped quick decisions from the client and the round one work stayed intact. This was made possible because of the level of trust PayPal had in Pentagram. And it's worth unpacking that a little bit. They didn't earn that trust with a perfect presentation or saying the exact right thing when defending the work. No. They earned that trust over years. It started all the way back with the MasterCard rebrand, and then they maintained it with every little interaction from that day on. I almost think about it like a chess game, of which I don't really play or even fully understand, but I know that every little move matters. Every interaction with a client, a phone call, an email, the meeting after the meeting, et cetera, are all little pieces on the board. And at some point, if you've made all of the right moves, The client fully believes in you and the solution you're presenting. And in this case, it was Checkmate in round one. And let's talk about the simplicity topic. Clients and armchair critics alike push back on simple solutions. They just do. And I get it. Sometimes as a creative, I feel that pull for more as well. You want to push for distinction in brand and you want to have expressiveness as an artist. There's real value in that. But the topic of simplicity beckons the question, what's the purpose of a brand's identity? Is it there for online praise? No. Is it there to serve itself? No. Is it there to serve the business? Yes. So judge the success of an identity based on how well it serves the brand and solved whatever problem was at hand. The goal isn't always to make something as expressive as possible. There is usually an opportunity to help a brand, be more identifiable, but that isn't always the priority. And in this case, the goal was to transition from a fintech brand to a lifestyle one. And in order to do that, they needed a big visual range, almost like a fashion brand where the mark sits back in the background and allows the products to shine. However, PayPal's intention isn't always to take a backseat as a brand. They're building from this foundation and will find more ways to add distinction, in illustration, motion, and more in the future. Andrea went on to say that we are just bombarded every day with visual culture, and there can be this desire to hit a higher and higher note to stand out. And he's all for that on certain projects when it serves the business first, and then the visual culture or the industry of branding second. But you shouldn't get those two ideas twisted. Andrea gave a lot of credit to the PayPal team for their trust and their decisiveness, but There was one other part to the story that he felt like deserved credit.

Andreas Trabucco-Campos 55:40

The other credit that I want to give is to the work itself. I'm fortunate that it happens quite often. It's not a rarity. Many identities have just been solidified like in round one. In the round one, I present usually two to three concepts and no more. They're all well built and they all offer an insight from a strategic standpoint visualizing to design. And so the forms make sense every decision made. makes sense and it becomes a question of attitude what attitude do we want to have you know we want to be more sort of upstream or playful or daring irreverent you know what have you like it's it's kind of that becomes a conversation and often there's clarity on the other end yeah no we we are an irreverent brand we want to break things or no we want to be for everyone but still elevated and so at this through that thinking it's it's kind of where i think decisions can happen because you you can enable a room to have that conversation as opposed to have a conversation around oh this is the right typeface and so on which i know i spoke a while a lot about this this type of thing but um To me, that's a side note in these conversations. It's a decision that I need to understand fully. I sort of prize part of my work to really understand the cultural valence of every single element that we bring in and sort of the historical occurrence and what it means to use it in culture today. At the same time, with a client in that room, you really should be pointing towards the future and sort of making sure that it's connected with everything that's present and everywhere, their trajectory, where they're going, their business goals, their strategic goals. And so that enables that decision. So, yeah, I mean, it's both rare and not. I've been lucky that that is something that happens. And I attribute it to the types of collaborations, the types of people that are in that room, but also how the shape of that conversation is based on the work and how that is shaped in itself.

Blake Howard 57:56

Okay that's a wrap on the PayPal rebrand story. Special thanks to Andrea and Pentagram for giving us the inside scoop on this change. Hey, and season six is just getting started. Coming up next episode, we are covering two things that I love, branding and soccer. We get the inside play-by-play with Justin Au from Gretel and Milo Kowalski with NYC FC, how they cautiously changed the boys in blue beloved badge for the MLS team. A big shout out to our incredible team. Today's episode was edited and scored by Adam Audio, that's A-T-A-M Audio, produced by Brianna Belcher Stephanie Kim designed this episode's artwork and a special thanks to Tracy Clark for our briefing I'm your host Blake Howard signing off