July 8, 2025 • 58 mins
Rebranding any global brand is a challenge, but especially in fintech where trust is non-negotiable. How do you approach rebranding a financial giant like PayPal? Andrea Trabucco-Campos, Partner at Pentagram, reveals how trust wasn’t just a goal for the brand’s audiences, but was a guiding principle within the design process itself.
To see the change of brand for yourself, visit achangeofbrand.com or follow us on Instagram @achangeofbrand.
Created by Matchstic (matchstic.com / @matchstic), hosted by Blake Howard (@blakehoward), co-hosted by Tracy Clark, edited and scored by ATAM Audio, brief-in by Dee Boyle, produced by Brianna Belcher, and artwork by Stephanie Kim and Michael Martino.
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Episode Transcript
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Blake Howard (00:00):
This episode of A Change of Brand is brought to
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Keep listening to learn more.
Hey, also, this podcast isproduced by Matchdig, the brand
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radically relevant brand.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (00:21):
a direct line or the approval from
the top, then lots of doorswill open because they need to
open.
There won't be sort of a huge,immense resistance from anyone.
Everyone wants to kind of be agood team player and be part of
this.
I think what happened iswhatever amount of resistance
(00:42):
got overtaken by the fact thatfrom June to September, so three
months, they needed to launchan entire new global brand.
And so it's like, okay, well,how do you make that?
We
Blake Howard (00:53):
don't have time for resistance.
It's time to go.
Hey everyone, welcome to AChange of Brand, a show
featuring behind-the-scenesstories of rebrand, glory,
drama, or disaster.
I'm your host, Blake Howard,and here with me is our co-host,
Tracy Clark.
Tracy Clark (01:13):
Hey Blake, how's it going?
Blake Howard (01:14):
It's season six, can you believe it?
No, what?
That's crazy.
Season six.
I mean, season five was prettygood, but season six is here,
and I'm...
I'm pretty excited.
Tracy Clark (01:29):
I'm pumped.
What are we going to talkabout?
Blake Howard (01:33):
Well, today we've got a good one to kick off with.
It's about PayPal.
I have a pretty good PayPalstory.
Tracy Clark (01:39):
Oh, really?
Like a fun PayPal story?
Yeah,
Blake Howard (01:43):
yeah.
You know, I try to kick offthese episodes with like a
little anecdotal firsthandexperience.
And several years ago, I becamea major PayPal fan.
My wife and I were looking fora new mattress.
We had a mattress that we hadloved.
It got damaged in a move.
And we went on this awfulexperience of buying new
(02:04):
mattresses.
You know, like you get aCasper, it gets sent to your
house.
so you open it up it's too firmthen you're like i have a giant
300 pound mattress what am igoing to do with it i have to
send it back it gets sent backlong story short we went through
like four or five mattresses wefound the exact previous
mattress that we had that gotdamaged and we ordered it from a
(02:25):
random site but we used paypalto purchase it they sent us the
mattress It was in the rightbox, but it was 100% the wrong
mattress, not the rightmattress.
Tracy Clark (02:36):
Oh, no.
And
Blake Howard (02:37):
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 ofhosed.
So we called our friends atPayPal.
And guess what?
They refunded us our money.
And then they went after thatmattress company.
Tracy Clark (02:55):
You got the full amount?
Full amount.
Blake Howard (02:57):
PayPal for the
Tracy Clark (02:57):
win.
All right.
Blake Howard (02:59):
They were our pals.
So I'm a fan.
I'm excited about today.
And, you know, this rebrand inparticular, it got a little bit
of blowback.
Some people really criticizedthe work and felt like it was
just too simple.
And it was part of this largertrend of brands stripping out
all of the personality.
And it does lead to thisquestion of like, whoa.
(03:19):
Is simplicity a bad thing or agood thing?
Or can you be too minimal?
I'm excited to figure out,like, the role of brand and how
particularly they figured it outin this case.
Tracy Clark (03:33):
I mean, you're talking about trust.
And we do hear in our world thetalk about trust a lot,
especially as more companyleaders are getting better at
connecting the dots betweenbrand and, like, business
strategy and brand partners needto understand long-term vision.
PayPal is also a reallytrust-heavy space.
You really need to trust afinance partner, right?
A money partner.
(03:53):
Not to mention they have a tonof audiences that put their
trust in them, right?
I mean, so you're a consumer,right?
There's also employees, there'smerchants, there's investors.
So yeah, I think trust is hugein our space these days.
Blake Howard (04:08):
A couple of things that I think we are going to
learn today is that sometimesinsane deadlines are good and
that trust really in a creativeprocess is everything.
And can some things be toosimple or is simplicity a good
or bad thing?
We're going to explore thattopic today.
And we also have a littlecameo.
We have a cameo about WillFerrell.
Tracy Clark (04:29):
Oh, yeah?
Blake Howard (04:30):
Yeah.
He's not on the show, actually.
Oh, all right.
But he is in this story.
You will hear his namementioned in this story.
So let's get into it.
You ready?
Tracy Clark (04:40):
Yeah, I'm ready.
Blake Howard (04:42):
Why don't you give us a little more backstory and
go ahead and get us briefed in.
Tracy Clark (04:51):
What does it mean for a tech trailblazer to go
back to basics?
In 2024, PayPal launched avisual rebrand with Pentagram
that dropped its overlappingdouble P monogram and bright
gradients in favor of a flatter,cleaner, more modern identity.
The new look is unmistakablydigital, responsive, legible,
and streamlined.
(05:11):
But for a brand that helpeddefine online payments, the
change sparked debate.
Had PayPal sharpened itspresence or lost its soul?
Founded in 1998 and launched aspart of a merger between
Confinity and X.com, yes, that'sElon Musk's early digital
finance venture, PayPal becamesynonymous with online
(05:32):
transactions, eBay purchases,and the early gig economy.
It was one of the first truefintech brands, building trust
around speed, security, andaccess long before fintech was a
buzzword.
Its brand followed suit,evolving from the utilitarian
serif of its startup days to themore tech-forward 2007 refresh.
(05:53):
And then again in 2014, whenFuse Project introduced a
tighter logotype and the nowiconic double P symbol.
Throughout the 2010s, PayPalused confident, people-first
advertising to cement itsposition as both friendly and
forward-thinking, from campaignslike Powering the People
Economy to the Super Bowl spotslike New Money, which formed the
(06:16):
company as an alternative tooutdated financial systems.
Now, fast forward to 2024, andthe landscape is way more
crowded and more corporate.
PayPal's rebrand leans intosimplicity, aiming for authority
in a field it once helpedinvent— But reactions were
mixed.
Some saw a confident evolutionwhile others lamented a loss of
(06:38):
warmth and distinctiveness.
What happens when a two-decadefintech pioneer embraces
minimalism?
And is the balance betweenlegacy and boldness harder to
strike when you go fromdisruptor to ubiquity?
Let's find out.
Blake Howard (06:59):
Alright, let's talk about the new PayPal brand
identity.
Hopefully you've already seenit.
If not, you can go toachangerbrand.com where we have
it featured.
The rebrand marks a starkchange in the visual history of
the brand.
The new custom type PayPal Prois kind of the star of the show.
It's a customized version ofFutura and is bold and slightly
(07:20):
unexpected in the fintech space.
Another big change is the useof the familiar overlapping P
symbol.
It's still around, but kind ofdemoted.
It's decoupled from the wordmark and just used separately.
There's some really fun motionin the work as well that gives
kind of the simplicity, a lot ofenergy and life.
And even though not everyonefound its simplicity charming,
(07:44):
there was one person who wasreally into it.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (07:47):
So my name can be pronounced two ways.
The way I grew up, uh, And thenthe 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 offunction both as the partner in
(08:14):
charge and the creativedirector.
as well as also part of thedesign team, which is sort of a
role that I take on in many ofthe projects that we lead at the
studio.
You know, this is a big, a
Blake Howard (08:29):
big story that we're going to get into a lot of
work, very complex.
If you had to title it like aheadline, how would you
summarize it in like a singleheadline?
Nothing like starting off witha really hard question.
Hey, Andrea, tell me what's themeaning of life?
(08:51):
Let's
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (08:52):
just get into it.
You know the next 45 minutes ofthis conversation?
Can you just summarize it atthe very start?
Can you design the cover beforewe know the content of the
book?
That's right, yeah.
I would say it's building it asit flies.
(09:12):
at a very high speed with avery close collaboration with
PayPal and every single otherentity around it.
Blake Howard (09:25):
Do you remember the very first time you heard
about the opportunity?
You know, typically the way itworks is you get an email or
back in the day used to be morephone calls, but someone reaches
out and says, Hey, Pentagram,we have an opportunity.
Do you remember when that firsthappened?
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (09:43):
Yeah.
Well, I had just joined as apartner at Pentagram in the New
York office.
And one of my partners, MichaelDeRude, had a longstanding sort
of relationship with the formerVerizon CMO, Diego Scotti, who
was about to move to PayPal asthe general manager.
(10:05):
And Michael is in atransitional period from being a
partner with a team in the NewYork 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 ofluck to sort of speak to him and
(10:28):
use him as a soundboard and getall of the experience that he
has.
But he kind of stopped takingon projects.
And this was one of them.
I had worked with Michael manyyears before as a designer at
Pentagram on MasterCard.
I was part of a different team,Luke Heyman's team, and Luke
(10:51):
Heyman and Michael Beroud cametogether to work on MasterCard.
And as part of that process, Igot to know Michael pretty well
and, you know, was really sortof the years that I spent as a
designer at Pentagram werereally formative.
So Zoom passed, you know, abunch of other chapters in my
career, like opening a studio inNew York City for Design Studio
(11:14):
and running it as a creativedirector and designer.
Then going to Gretel, doingkind of the same role of
creative direction and design.
I get called to become apartner.
And so I joined.
And as I joined, this move fromVerizon to PayPal happens.
And Michael involves me and westart sort of talking about it
(11:38):
with Diego and sort of reallyunderstanding what the future of
PayPal could hold.
Diego has a very interesting, Iwould say, I would even venture
to say visionary, because theway he looks at sort of the
brands that he's been operatingwithin is, is quite connected to
(11:59):
culture.
He's looking at them not justthrough their business function,
which you need to understand,not just through their makeup at
a structural level, theirpresence, but their opportunity,
what they could do, how theycould become.
And our earliest conversationswere really around that.
Where is PayPal at that pointin time?
(12:22):
I sort of did a full audit ofeverything that they had done.
And we just started having aninformed conversation about the
space that they were in, themoment in time they were sort of
occupying, and the culturalmoment in time.
(12:42):
And often, those are the threelayers of depth that you can i
get into um it's sort of thecompany the context and the
culture around it and thecontext involves competition but
also you know aspirationalbrands around them and so on um
and and it was through thoseconversations that we started
(13:03):
sort of thinking about what is aspeculative future for paypal
Blake Howard (13:07):
were they talking to other groups at that point or
was it was it just kind of asingle conversation with
pentagram
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (13:15):
it was a single conversation with
pentagram There were definitelyother interests from other ends
of the business to kind of lookat other studios, but there's a
trust.
And I think that maybe we havea bit forgotten this part that
all great works, all of thegreat projects that happen in
(13:37):
the world, have to rely ontrust.
Trust between the client andthe studio or agency that
they're working with.
And often trust betweenindividuals within those
settings.
I tend to think of these asvery much like collaborations.
I don't call clients sort of myclient.
(13:58):
I really sort of try to embodythe idea that we're
collaborating on something, evenat the scale.
And it changes the entirerelationship because it makes it
so much a little bit more of aback and forth you're not sort
of doling knowledge you're kindof actually trying to listen and
understand because they havethe keys to something that you
(14:19):
don't
Blake Howard (14:19):
so you do that audit and i loved the way you
put it the the context theculture and then i forget the
first c company maybe yeah yeahso you're trying to figure out
all right What's the lay of theland?
And was the, out of that, wasthe problem to solve really
clear?
Like, did you have an insightwhere you're like, okay, here's
the real challenge?
(14:40):
Or did they already have kindof 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 reallyimportant brand in the world
still.
And there are some facts thatare really hard facts in terms
of digital payments globally.
PayPal is the most trusted byfar.
There's no other paymentsystem, including sort of Apple
(15:07):
Pay, which is just sort of awrapper for a lot of things.
You know, the Apple Card is oneof the things that they offer,
but PayPal still remains to thisday as this global presence in
digital payments.
So there was that fact.
There was the fact that theywere also the first to digital
payments.
They pioneered this.
There were really interestingpeople company to begin with,
(15:29):
and they were pushing technologyout.
That sort of ethos had sort ofsolidified into being
comfortable with the things thatthey were doing.
So Diego came in and at thesame time that Alex Chris, the
new CEO, was sort of part ofthat, part of sort of this
renewal at PayPal and the visionthat uh alex really has
(15:52):
established from a business andinnovation sense and really
pushing like diego from a brandand business opportunities but
alex like has the savvy and umreally the the intuition of
where to go next well this isthe state of things as it has
been and you know they have areally well put together brand
(16:14):
Gretel actually had done it theyit's it's absolutely designed
as a system it functions it canget a little repetitive they
were using sort of the samecolors and same things it is not
aspirational it is not one ofthe top 25 brands that everyone
would kind of look at and sortof find sort of inspiring.
(16:38):
And it didn't have the kind offlexibility that would allow
them to take a sort of a bigmedia spin.
And so early on, thoseconversations were happening of,
okay, how do we shift the waythe brand currently feels into
from like FinTech, let's say,and corporate FinTech into a
(17:01):
lifestyle brand?
I think from the get-go, thiswas the conversation.
It's one of the most trustedbrands.
It was one of the mostinnovative brands.
They can be that again.
And they can be a big culturalplayer, 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 opensup the aperture of design range
and sort of starts to...
plant the seed of like, whatdoes that look like?
Because something that's morein the category of like B2B
fintech is going to send youdown a certain route.
But saying no, this needs to bein the upper echelon of just
(17:45):
inspiring brands out in themarket in general.
That's more of a lifestylebrand that gives you a lot of
freedom.
So where did you go from there?
Like once that sort of initialidea 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 designexercise of speculative kind of
brand identity futures, I wouldcall it.
And it's very much sort of, itwas a way to investigate how the
brand identity could evolve andwhere it could go.
(18:23):
There were some sort ofbusiness vision kind of
documents that were shared withus.
We kind of extracted a bit andcreated a bit of the creative
strategy to create a foundationto do the exploration.
But the task was clear is howdo you shift and preserve some
of the equity that PayPal hashad visually, but shifted
(18:47):
drastically into this new spacewhere 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 wouldgo, you start from the symbol,
the logo, the typefaces.
And there are some things thatwere sacred objects.
(19:08):
The PayPal symbol, which we nowcall the monogram, and I'll
explain that in a second, themonogram needed to stay.
it couldn't kind of change fromwhere it is drastically because
it has a lot of equity and ithas almost a decade old kind of
history.
So that object was important tounderstand how you would evolve
(19:30):
it, but everything around itcould change.
And so we sort of exploreddifferent steps starting from,
in these evolutions at thisscale, you have to look at
closer into where it is now orwhere it was then and then
further and further and furtherand further.
And in that process, yougenerate basically different
directions.
(19:50):
And you start discovering whatactually, what opportunities you
can sort of generate byshifting the typist, shifting
the color, shifting, you know,moving away from the graphic
elements.
And so we did that, and then wesort of had conversations
around those directions.
And I think certain things werestarting to feel right.
(20:13):
At that point, Futura was notin the picture, but something
close to Futura, another typistcalled Kabel, which is a
concurrent around that time,when Futura starts that is drawn
in 1920s by Paul Renner.
There's this other typefacethat's also geometric.
It's also a sans, but it's abit friendlier.
It has a couple of quirks.
(20:34):
And I was using something byGeneral Type, which is a foundry
in France called Radion, whichis sort of a revival of that
typeface.
And it was feeling great.
And we learned a ton of thingsfrom that exercise.
But at some point, therealities of being in this new
environment for that core teamand leadership sort of became
(21:00):
more than apparent that itwasn't the exact moment to take
on the full rebrand then.
So after sort of this exerciseof exploring We did start
sharing it with other ends ofPayPal and having discussions
around, is this the righttypeface?
Is this the right set ofcolors?
(21:20):
What are the requirements?
And we spoke to the productleadership and the brand team
leadership.
And it really started sort ofbecoming more real.
But as I said, after an initialperiod 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 ahill, getting budget approval or
executive leadership buy-in iseverything.
And all could be lost if itstalls out too much.
Andrea went on to say that eventhough they lost the momentum
on the bigger rebrand, they wereable to stay connected on other
(21:58):
projects like designing thelook and feel for an awards
program and a few others.
These smaller assignments keptthat relationship strong and
allowed them to evolve the brandfrom the inside out.
And like a late night doomscroll, they kept getting deeper
and deeper within the PayPalecosystem.
And eventually the main rebrandeffort returned.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (22:21):
Yeah, no.
So in the initial work, wejust, we got to a point where
certain things were selected andcertain things were actually
feeling more right.
But I think in the, you know,when you pause things,
especially that thread, you gainclarity.
And so when you look back atit, the typeface that we had
chosen, it wasn't feeling right.
(22:42):
It sort of had a tone thatmaybe 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 thatit's a It's a brand that is for
everyone, right?
Like everyone can use it andit's welcoming to everyone.
But I think what they'vestruggled with is the idea of
(23:05):
becoming kind of welcoming in avisual way.
Like, how do you do that?
And how friendly are you?
You know, think of the namePayPal.
the PAL needs to be defined.
Are you sort of a PAL as in aneighbor that I once in a while
kind of rely on and so on?
Or are you my PAL, likeliterally one of my best friends
that I kind of can have aconversation?
(23:26):
That texture of PAL isconnected to the texture of the
brand identity.
And so I think defining that ina typographic space, for
instance, it's like, I think theearly work was very much like,
sort of, hey, I'm your bestfriend, I'm here, like, quirky,
and I'll tell you jokes, andI'll be there.
And I think as we sort ofrestarted the project of the
(23:51):
brand identity, we sort of hadthe clarity that, okay, this is
a bit too friendly and a bit tooplayful.
We need to elevate quite a bitand sort of become a bit more
aspiring.
And that's when Futura cameback into the picture.
You sort of can speak about itin so many ways, right?
(24:12):
Like you could say, look, wedid an incredible amount of
strategy, blah, blah, blah.
And then it led to these set ofthings and so on.
But ultimately, you're stillkind of deciding on the same
elements that everyone needs touse.
You're designing on a typeface,you're designing on a color
system, you're deciding on amotion system, a way in which
(24:34):
compositions, layouts work.
All of these decisions compoundinto an attitude.
And the attitude is kind of themost critical thing you could
try and design.
In our case, Futura, which issort of a typeface that is
almost 100 years old, it wasreleased in 1927, has been a
(24:56):
participant in culture for thatlength of time.
And it has been, you know, it'sway older than Helvetica, for
instance, and it's been bakedinto every single end of
culture.
It's been used by majorfilmmakers and also fashion
houses.
It's a typeface that lives inmany different places.
(25:19):
including the moon, becausewhen Apollo 11 was like sort of
designed, all the plaques,everything about it, the
patches, everything had Futurain it.
So it's a typeface thatliterally has been sort of
permeated the globe and also themoon, I guess, sort of we've
traveled abroad with it out ofthe sphere.
(25:41):
So It's a really significanttech phase.
And when you're sort ofdeciding on that, I think the
initial audit of the space wasreally critical.
Everyone that is in that spaceis using either a grotesque,
which is a sense of like ahelvetica derivative or even
(26:02):
precursor to your helvetica.
So they all are using a versionof that.
just to really dumb it down ina way.
And nobody was using thisgeometric kind of sans-serif
like Futura.
And when you look at the top 30brands, there's very few and
(26:22):
far between.
So from even just an imprint, atypographic imprint, you have
an opportunity to distance thisbrand from everyone else.
But that is not the only thing.
you can do, like, there's awhole life around it that we
dove into.
That's just the criticaldecision early on that from that
initial work, then sort of ledto really understanding why we
(26:50):
should make the decisions thatwe made.
The typeface was one piece.
And although it seems like soatomic, as an element, it's the
core foundation ofcommunication.
But it's grounded by thestrategic intent that they're a
brand that should feeltrustworthy.
Well, Techface has been aroundfor 100 years.
(27:13):
Optimistic.
There's a basic geometry.
Everyone can access this, theseforms.
And sort of simple.
Those are the three kind ofcore principles that were
guiding lots of the work andlots of the decision making at
the top level.
sometimes is actually a chorusof decisions.
(27:33):
It's not just one sort ofbullet that kind of cuts
through.
It's actually a vision of anintent that we're moving into a
lifestyle kind of space, and weneed a leaner and really well
calibrated system.
And so how do you obtain that?
Well, you need to do theseevaluations.
(27:54):
Number one, you need to makesure that whatever way you're
communicating words that it'sunique and stands apart from
everything.
And that the second thing isthat whatever color imprint you
have also is unique and standsapart from everything.
The question on the yellow plusblue was a big one.
(28:14):
We explored changing the yellowinto orange.
We explored changing it alltogether into an adjacent to
blue, which something like agreen or a teal.
And so we looked at anextensive amount.
And then at some point, sort ofjust realized that, well,
there's an issue with the symboland how it was sort of treated
(28:37):
before with color, is that thetop P and the bottom P weren't
really creating a great amountof color contrast.
The idea is that the top P inthe previous logo kind of felt
like it was sitting on top ofthe bottom P.
They weren't overlapping andcreating something new.
They were actually...
kind of just pasting on top ofeach other.
(28:59):
And so by correcting that, weintroduced a lighter blue in the
bottom P, and then a mediumblue in the center, and then a
dark blue, which was anevolution of the blue that they
had.
By doing that, you createsomething that in color theory
is called continuous contrast,which is a very similar theory
(29:19):
that we applied to MasterCard.
It's just a simple positionmaking from color that Two
colors can have a third color inthe middle that creates the
idea that the two colors haveoverlapped in some way.
And so by doing that, we sortof introduced the new color
system.
And by just that, there's threeblues.
(29:41):
PayPal has always been blue.
And they were the first in thedigital payment system.
Well, why not double down onthat?
Why not create a system thatuses blue as the underpinning
element?
Blake Howard (29:55):
How are you engaging with PayPal along this
journey?
Are these really quick, smallshares and you're getting
alignment with PayPal?
Is everything you just wentthrough, was that a big
milestone presentation or was itsmall breadcrumbs where this is
just coalescing as you
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (30:16):
go?
No, there was a bigpresentation.
Actually, in that time of thepause, a sort of an excellent
new player joined the picture.
They hired a new CMO, who's thecurrent CMO, Jeff Seeley, who
came from a history of being inother sort of brands in that
(30:40):
space, like Cash App, forinstance, and had a great
understanding of brand anddesign and so on.
Michael and I were actually inEngland and we had the
presentation ready and so on.
And we flew back to New Yorkand straight from the airport
into the PayPal headquarters andmet with Diego and Jeff and
(31:02):
just presented sort of threeroutes of this renewed kind of
vision.
And in presenting that, we hadthe first one That was exactly
what it is now.
The second one, which played alot with angles and the idea
(31:22):
that people could commit to thatslant that they had in the
name.
And what if the entire systemis just sort of about speed and
connection and so on.
And then a third one thatplayed with ideas of openness
and sort of that strategicintent.
Surely enough, we start goingthrough the first one and go,
go, go.
(31:43):
And, you know, you're sort ofreading the room and there's
like a good reaction.
We end on the summary slide ofthe first one and we still have
two more to go.
One of them stands up and sortof just offers their hand.
They're like, you guys did it.
To me and Michael.
And it was like.
(32:04):
It was kind of a surrealmoment.
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 businessdecision.
Of doing a large media buy.
(32:25):
By September.
And launch a campaign called.
PayPal everywhere in which theywould transcend the digital
space and go into the physicalspace.
And so with this sort ofdeadline looming, they were
feeling like none of the piecesof the previous identity were
working in their favor tocommunicate this new ideas and
(32:48):
energy and sort of presence andculture.
They had also made a deal withWill Ferrell at that point.
And it's like things werelining up, but the visual tools
and the brand identity that Ihad was not Diego and Jeff
Sealy.
And they kind of talked throughit a little bit.
And then they were like, well,let's see the rest, you know,
and sort of we go through therest.
(33:09):
And I'm just accelerating asfast as I can through
everything.
There's nothing to see like,you know, but we do get to a
place where that decision ismade in that room.
Blake Howard (33:23):
Just like that, Andrea and the team are in
business.
The PayPal execs were notmessing around.
They were hitting add to cartand checking out right away.
And the pros at Pentagramweren't going to talk past the
sell.
This is one main benefit from atight timeline.
Go too fast and yeah, youshortchange the creative
(33:44):
process, maybe some buy-in oroverall quality, but go too slow
and you risk losing momentum.
And somewhere in the sweetspot, is the deal of the day,
decisiveness and a littlepressure.
Okay, speaking of time, it'stime for a quick break.
When we come back, we get moreinto this tight timeline and how
Andrea feels about some of theonline criticism.
(34:07):
All that and more after thebreak.
What if your brand guidelineswere as easy to edit as a doc?
or as precise as your designfiles and you didn't need a
single line of code.
That can't be true, you'resaying.
(34:28):
It's not possible.
Well, guess what?
It is.
And that's where standardscomes in.
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permissions and automation, itgives you total control and zero
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Whether you're a nimble studioor a massive in-house team,
(34:50):
Standards scales with you.
Check it out atwww.standards.site, that's
S-I-T-E, and finally, bring someorder 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 ourproducing partner for this show.
We specialize in helpinggrowing brands take their
identity to the next level.
If you need help clarifyingyour message or standing out in
the market, be sure to visit usat matchstick.com.
That's M-A-T-C-H-S-T-I-C dotcom.
(35:29):
And if you're enjoying this andother 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 unbelievablyfast executive approval
immediately in the room on roundone.
And this is rare in myexperience.
Often clients need days orweeks of deliberation or
litigation to socialize and getfeedback from colleagues and
staff and family members and itcan go on and on.
(36:06):
So the speed of this wasslightly shocking to me.
But what was funny is it didn'tseem that rare to Andrea.
Clearly, I'm doing somethingwrong or he's just doing
something right.
He actually had two insights onwhy 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 spokeabout before, right?
Trusting collaborations thatcan be really powerful and that
trust It needs to be unwaveringin a way.
And then the other factor isdecisiveness, not hesitating in
(36:42):
situations where you could behesitating.
And if I were to describePayPal before sort of this group
of leadership came in, theywere hesitating all the time.
Like they were second guessing.
And it's because you don't havea clarity of vision.
When you have that, then you'relike, okay, how do I make it?
Okay, I need to make thisdecision, this other decision,
this other decision.
(37:03):
And you also startunderstanding 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, ofcourse, it's like a much larger
discussion because it kind ofimpacts everything.
And so changing the logo,changing the colors has an
implication all the way down tothe checkout button, which is
(37:24):
millions and millions andmillions of dollars.
I think the intent in that roomwas, okay, let's do it.
And so right after thatmeeting, I was supposed to go
back to the office and to thepentagram office in Gramercy.
And surely enough, they werelike, okay, can you jump on the
phone with publicists and so on?
And so just onboarding everyoneto a round one identity that
(37:50):
that was you know i mean the i'msure like many other studios
but you know i'll speak formyself like round ones look real
but you know there's stillthings to figure out because
they're still round two threeapplications 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 initialround and they say like we like
it There's typically so muchnuanced little work to build it
all out that, you know, youdon't get like an official
approval for months later.
I think it's so interestingthat the decision was made.
You have an executive buy-in,which is the hard, usually
(38:29):
that's the top of the mountain.
That's the hardest thing toachieve.
But in this case, you had itright away and then they were
like, go.
And then you had to geteveryone else on board.
Was there resistance as you didthat?
Like, were people questioningyou?
Should the symbol be locked upwith the mark?
Are you sure it should beseparated?
Are you sure this is the rightcolor?
As you tried to align othergroups, other teams, did you get
(38:52):
any resistance as you were sortof sharing it out?
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (38:55):
Well, I think there was a clarity
around why those decisions werehappening, right?
So number one, the decision tounlock the usual tech kind of
couplet of symbol plus wordmarkwhich is true of Spotify,
Airbnb, sort of these techgiants that created brands that
(39:18):
really worked, worked thatrelationship from a logo
perspective.
The decision to decouple thiscame from an insight on sort of
just general culture.
You have fashion houses, carmakers, and tons of other types
of hardware brands that usetheir logo for Like when I say
(39:42):
logo, I mean the word mark.
Use the word mark forcommunication and then the
symbol for the product that theysort of are creating.
I would say the things thatwere kind of challenging were
maybe the typeface to a certaindegree.
The proportions of Futura arevery different to today's
standards compared to any numberof other typefaces that are
(40:07):
used today.
And so The question became, youknow, do we commission a text
version, a sort of a UI version,which in fact we did.
And we're currently kind ofworking through and will be
released this year and thenimplemented into the product
soon.
The product team is currentlytesting it and so far it's been
just great.
(40:27):
It kind of creates thiscontinuity from the top level.
where we use PayPal Pro, thecustom type that is based on
Futura, to PayPal Pro UI, whichcan really perform and
outperforms actually SF, Butwe've been working really
closely with the Type Foundryline two, which has made some of
(40:48):
the greatest hits incontemporary sort of culture of
type.
And they're really excellent.
And so this is the first timein the history, in the hundred
year old history, where a textversion of Futura is worked.
It's a really tricky kind ofvery technical and so on, very
nerdy.
So I'll spare you thosedetails.
(41:08):
But the attitude that Futuraachieves is because of its
proportions, of course.
As soon as you start changingthat, the attitude changes.
But we've managed to kind ofwork through a version that
actually sort of addresses allthe concerns.
Direction is approved.
We go and let's make it.
The first question was like,well, look, this is not a great
(41:30):
kind of typeface for product asit stands today, you know, and
we we've sort of navigated thedecisions around that.
And there's a little bit ofresistance, but not I wouldn't
say like a stopping point.
And the thing that happens whenyou're speaking, I think in the
best projects that have been onwhere the true transformations
(41:51):
of brands, like this one, if youhave a direct line or the
approval from the top, then lotsof 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 agood team player and be part of
(42:12):
this.
I think what happened iswhatever amount of resistance
got overtaken by the fact thatfrom June to September, so three
months, they needed to launchan 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 leftto figure it all out.
So they had weeklycollaborative sessions with the
core brand team to iron outdifferent elements within the
system like specific values ofthe blues or what blues could be
(42:51):
used where and why.
They did some testing which Ithought was interesting to
validate which colorcombinations perform the best
and how the PayPal button shouldevolve.
Luckily for them, the new colordirection and the simple word
mark, surprisingly, outperformedevery other iteration of the
previous brand identity.
(43:12):
This is also when they startedto explore the motion system as
well.
They were inspired by commonpayment gestures, like the tap
and pay, and how they couldsuggest 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 toget the CVV, or other common
digital gestures and motionssuch as swipes.
(43:33):
Fast forward a few months,Pentagram, PayPal, and many
other agencies practically movedheaven and earth to launch in
September of 2024.
The new brand identity debutedwith an all-new PayPal credit
card and this fun spot with WillFerrell by BBH USA.
Tracy Clark (43:54):
Did you just pay with PayPal?
Yeah.
Now you can use it in storesand 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 anycategory you choose.
Blake Howard (44:11):
The news coverage started immediately.
From fast company to creativeboom to brand new, mock-ups of
out-of-home ads, smartwatcheswith motion, shopping bags, and
a fun little launch videopopulated those stories.
And faster than a one-clickcheckout, the criticism came.
And all in all, it was mostlyan attack on simplicity.
(44:34):
Listen to some of theseheadlines.
PayPal has a new logo thatmakes it look just like
Speaker 04 (44:40):
everything
Blake Howard (44:40):
else.
A symptom of a troublingcultural 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 outpersonality or oversimplified
their brand assets, likeGoDaddy, Petco, or Johnson &
Johnson.
Of course, I had to getAndrea'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 brandidentity is not in the moment of
its release.
It's actually how it evolvesover time, right?
And so if you look at some ofthe most powerful identities
that have ever been made,they've grown over time.
(45:28):
And there are somewhat oforganisms, visual organisms that
can adapt, but have a coresense of self.
I think we've done this here,and it's evolving, and it's
distinct from everyone elsearound it.
You can't ask for more thanthat.
Sometimes we just get enamoredby the bells and whistles of an
animation or some great artdirection in a film.
(45:51):
It's not that.
These are the tools, and thetools are so simple and yet
flexible and powerful, and theycan do a lot.
So there's that one piece thatI think, to me, time is going to
really...
mark the success of this and ithink in time in a very
different way than other peoplebecause i my partners are some
(46:13):
of them are in their 60s their70s they've been in the industry
for 30 plus years um and thatgives you a different sense i'm
not trying to compete with likeyou know the rest that is like
just thinking year to yeartrying to release whatever like
I'm thinking of things thatlast.
And I want to, and I think atthe core of Pentagram, we think
(46:33):
of building things that willstand the test of time.
The other thing is that there'sthis idea that simplicity is a
little bit scorned, flatteningthings, right?
There's this whole like kind ofmeme of like, oh, all these
logos changed from this to SansSerifs and so on.
And I think to some degree, weshould be vigilant about this,
(46:56):
right?
When Burberry changed fromtheir previous logo to the
second previous logo to like theSans Serif version, probably
was a misstep.
There's a huge reason why thesekind of serifs and the history
of Burberry specificallyassociated with that is really
powerful and should be evolved.
So going into geometric sans orhumanist sans actually is not
(47:23):
that interesting.
It's understandable, but it'snot that interesting.
And Hence, the step beyondthat, they sort of changed back
into a redrawn version of anoriginal sort of Burberry serve.
It looks fantastic.
It's amazing.
And then the whole graphicsystem around it is great.
So as a brand identity, they'vekind of reactivated something
that was unique to them.
(47:44):
If you look at PayPal, theydidn't have this sort of long
history of like kind of...
i don't know beautiful kind ofmarks that are very distinct it
was an italicized version of ageneric kind of geometric sense
kind of it's in some ways whenthe criticism came of the new
identity has flattenedeverything else that came before
(48:06):
it's like well look at what wasbefore it's you know it's as i
said a very solid identityespecially the the last one that
gretel did but It's notrevolutionizing visual culture
in any possible way.
It doesn't have this wholehistory of existence and why it
matters to exist that way.
And so I think, to me, all ofthese kind of critical views
(48:30):
miss one point, which is easilyvisible by this.
If you do the thoughtexperiment of, say, Apple
doesn't exist or exists in adifferent form, and Apple
releases their brand identitytoday, They just you see it on
brand new and you sort of seehere's the logo.
It's an evolution of the thingthat came before.
And then here's the set of typeis San Francisco.
(48:52):
And and then you see sort ofit's black and white.
It's all minimal.
It's all done this way.
The apps look exactly the sameway.
The website's kind of and thenthere's good art direction here
and there.
You see that and you're goingto say, well, this is too
simple.
It's not a great identity.
It's not good.
And, yeah, of course, like wewant as a graphic designers, we
(49:15):
want to make things explode.
And like, you know, we want tomake things that kind of make
turn your head turn.
The thing is, a graphic systemsometimes like a brand identity
system doesn't need to do that.
It can be the vehicle ontowhich maybe the window onto
which you can project incrediblethings.
ideas just like apple doesright like apple uses art
(49:39):
direction and photography andmotion to really activate these
things but the brand itself isvery slim and so what we've
created very intentionally so isthe simplest version of that
identity
Blake Howard (49:53):
that moment that they were decisive started
probably back in the mastercardproject where They were building
trust and the reputation ofPentagram 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 thatpresentation.
(50:15):
So it wasn't like you just walkin and you have that trust and
the work's killer and they loveit and they choose it.
It's the progression.
It's the journey.
of every little touch pointalong the way, having a point of
view saying how importantdesign is and how to think
about, you know, selecting atypeface that's got a history
and has a cultural relevancetoday.
And there's a distinctopportunity in the market.
(50:37):
You know, it's all of thoselittle strategic ideas that
layered up to that moment.
And I think that some designersthink you just got to crush
that one meeting, but it's, it'sall, all of the, the
interactions all the way up toit.
And I just think that'ssomething 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 otherway i've heard it and i want to
attribute it like i'm big intocrediting sources um and so um
it's it's uh actually briancollins who says um don't sort
of i mean i'm i'm gonnaparaphrase here um he says it's
(51:18):
not about the big yes it's aboutthe hundred yeses, small yeses,
right?
And it's exactly what youdescribed.
And I think just intuitivelyspeaking, being in rooms with
Michael, being in rooms withother Pentagram partners, you
(51:38):
sort of learn, I think almost byosmosis, that it's always just
a conversation.
You're always just talking.
in a dialogue with someoneelse, whether it's a room of 20
people or it's a room with threepeople, you are literally
thinking through thepossibilities in the future.
(51:59):
And so the better you listenand the more you sort of deeply
embed yourself into thatcontext, the more you can do the
thing that you're known for,which is create a visual
equivalent of the opportunitythat Liza had.
I think the trust is built fromall of those, as you said,
(52:21):
little moments.
I mean, it's sort of inconversation every time anything
is kind of shared.
It's reflected upon and thensort 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 timelinepressure isn't a bad thing.
In this case, it helped quickdecisions from the client and
the round one work stayedintact.
This was made possible becauseof the level of trust PayPal had
in Pentagram.
And it's worth unpacking that alittle bit.
(53:01):
They didn't earn that trustwith a perfect presentation or
saying the exact right thingwhen defending the work.
No.
They earned that trust overyears.
It started all the way backwith the MasterCard rebrand, and
then they maintained it withevery little interaction from
that day on.
I almost think about it like achess game, of which I don't
(53:22):
really play or even fullyunderstand, but I know that
every little move matters.
Every interaction with aclient, 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'vemade all of the right moves, The
client fully believes in youand the solution you're
presenting.
(53:43):
And in this case, it wasCheckmate in round one.
And let's talk about thesimplicity topic.
Clients and armchair criticsalike push back on simple
solutions.
They just do.
And I get it.
Sometimes as a creative, I feelthat pull for more as well.
You want to push fordistinction in brand and you
(54:04):
want to have expressiveness asan artist.
There's real value in that.
But the topic of simplicitybeckons 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 thebusiness?
Yes.
So judge the success of anidentity based on how well it
(54:27):
serves the brand and solvedwhatever problem was at hand.
The goal isn't always to makesomething as expressive as
possible.
There is usually an opportunityto help a brand, be more
identifiable, but that isn'talways the priority.
And in this case, the goal wasto transition from a fintech
brand to a lifestyle one.
(54:47):
And in order to do that, theyneeded a big visual range,
almost like a fashion brandwhere the mark sits back in the
background and allows theproducts to shine.
However, PayPal's intentionisn't always to take a backseat
as a brand.
They're building from thisfoundation and will find more
ways to add distinction, inillustration, motion, and more
(55:10):
in the future.
Andrea went on to say that weare just bombarded every day
with visual culture, and therecan be this desire to hit a
higher and higher note to standout.
And he's all for that oncertain projects when it serves
the business first, and then thevisual culture or the industry
of branding second.
But you shouldn't get those twoideas twisted.
(55:30):
Andrea gave a lot of credit tothe PayPal team for their trust
and their decisiveness, butThere was one other part to the
story that he felt like deservedcredit.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (55:40):
The other credit that I want to give
is to the work itself.
I'm fortunate that it happensquite often.
It's not a rarity.
Many identities have just beensolidified like in round one.
In the round one, I presentusually two to three concepts
and no more.
They're all well built and theyall offer an insight from a
(56:01):
strategic standpoint visualizingto design.
And so the forms make senseevery decision made.
makes sense and it becomes aquestion of attitude what
attitude do we want to have youknow we want to be more sort of
upstream or playful or daringirreverent you know what have
you like it's it's kind of thatbecomes a conversation and often
(56:24):
there's clarity on the otherend yeah no we we are an
irreverent brand we want tobreak things or no we want to be
for everyone but still elevatedand so at this through that
thinking it's it's kind of wherei think decisions can happen
because you you can enable aroom to have that conversation
as opposed to have aconversation around oh this is
(56:46):
the right typeface and so onwhich i know i spoke a while a
lot about this this type ofthing but um To me, that's a
side note in theseconversations.
It's a decision that I need tounderstand fully.
I sort of prize part of my workto really understand the
cultural valence of every singleelement that we bring in and
(57:09):
sort of the historicaloccurrence and what it means to
use it in culture today.
At the same time, with a clientin that room, you really should
be pointing towards the futureand sort of making sure that
it's connected with everythingthat's present and everywhere,
their trajectory, where they'regoing, their business goals,
their strategic goals.
And so that enables thatdecision.
(57:31):
So, yeah, I mean, it's bothrare and not.
I've been lucky that that issomething that happens.
And I attribute it to the typesof collaborations, the types of
people that are in that room,but also how the shape of that
conversation is based on the workand how that is shaped in itself.
Blake Howard (57:56):
Okay that's a wrap on the PayPal rebrand story.
Special thanks to Andrea andPentagram for giving us the
inside scoop on this change.
Hey, and season six is justgetting started.
Coming up next episode, we arecovering two things that I love,
branding and soccer.
We get the inside play-by-playwith Justin Au from Gretel and
(58:19):
Milo Kowalski with NYC FC, howthey cautiously changed the boys
in blue beloved badge for theMLS team.
A big shout out to ourincredible team.
Today's episode was edited andscored by Adam Audio, that's
A-T-A-M Audio, produced byBrianna Belcher Stephanie Kim
(58:39):
designed this episode's artworkand a special thanks to Tracy
Clark for our briefing I'm yourhost Blake Howard signing off
This episode of A Change of Brand is brought to
you by Standards, the no-codeplatform for building web-based
brand guidelines with totaldesign control.
Keep listening to learn more.
Hey, also, this podcast isproduced by Matchdig, the brand
identity house for leaderstaking bold steps towards a
radically relevant brand.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (00:21):
a direct line or the approval from
the top, then lots of doorswill open because they need to
open.
There won't be sort of a huge,immense resistance from anyone.
Everyone wants to kind of be agood team player and be part of
this.
I think what happened iswhatever amount of resistance
(00:42):
got overtaken by the fact thatfrom June to September, so three
months, they needed to launchan entire new global brand.
And so it's like, okay, well,how do you make that?
We
Blake Howard (00:53):
don't have time for resistance.
It's time to go.
Hey everyone, welcome to AChange of Brand, a show
featuring behind-the-scenesstories of rebrand, glory,
drama, or disaster.
I'm your host, Blake Howard,and here with me is our co-host,
Tracy Clark.
Tracy Clark (01:13):
Hey Blake, how's it going?
Blake Howard (01:14):
It's season six, can you believe it?
No, what?
That's crazy.
Season six.
I mean, season five was prettygood, but season six is here,
and I'm...
I'm pretty excited.
Tracy Clark (01:29):
I'm pumped.
What are we going to talkabout?
Blake Howard (01:33):
Well, today we've got a good one to kick off with.
It's about PayPal.
I have a pretty good PayPalstory.
Tracy Clark (01:39):
Oh, really?
Like a fun PayPal story?
Yeah,
Blake Howard (01:43):
yeah.
You know, I try to kick offthese episodes with like a
little anecdotal firsthandexperience.
And several years ago, I becamea major PayPal fan.
My wife and I were looking fora new mattress.
We had a mattress that we hadloved.
It got damaged in a move.
And we went on this awfulexperience of buying new
(02:04):
mattresses.
You know, like you get aCasper, it gets sent to your
house.
so you open it up it's too firmthen you're like i have a giant
300 pound mattress what am igoing to do with it i have to
send it back it gets sent backlong story short we went through
like four or five mattresses wefound the exact previous
mattress that we had that gotdamaged and we ordered it from a
(02:25):
random site but we used paypalto purchase it they sent us the
mattress It was in the rightbox, but it was 100% the wrong
mattress, not the rightmattress.
Tracy Clark (02:36):
Oh, no.
And
Blake Howard (02:37):
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 ofhosed.
So we called our friends atPayPal.
And guess what?
They refunded us our money.
And then they went after thatmattress company.
Tracy Clark (02:55):
You got the full amount?
Full amount.
Blake Howard (02:57):
PayPal for the
Tracy Clark (02:57):
win.
All right.
Blake Howard (02:59):
They were our pals.
So I'm a fan.
I'm excited about today.
And, you know, this rebrand inparticular, it got a little bit
of blowback.
Some people really criticizedthe work and felt like it was
just too simple.
And it was part of this largertrend of brands stripping out
all of the personality.
And it does lead to thisquestion of like, whoa.
(03:19):
Is simplicity a bad thing or agood thing?
Or can you be too minimal?
I'm excited to figure out,like, the role of brand and how
particularly they figured it outin this case.
Tracy Clark (03:33):
I mean, you're talking about trust.
And we do hear in our world thetalk about trust a lot,
especially as more companyleaders are getting better at
connecting the dots betweenbrand and, like, business
strategy and brand partners needto understand long-term vision.
PayPal is also a reallytrust-heavy space.
You really need to trust afinance partner, right?
A money partner.
(03:53):
Not to mention they have a tonof audiences that put their
trust in them, right?
I mean, so you're a consumer,right?
There's also employees, there'smerchants, there's investors.
So yeah, I think trust is hugein our space these days.
Blake Howard (04:08):
A couple of things that I think we are going to
learn today is that sometimesinsane deadlines are good and
that trust really in a creativeprocess is everything.
And can some things be toosimple or is simplicity a good
or bad thing?
We're going to explore thattopic today.
And we also have a littlecameo.
We have a cameo about WillFerrell.
Tracy Clark (04:29):
Oh, yeah?
Blake Howard (04:30):
Yeah.
He's not on the show, actually.
Oh, all right.
But he is in this story.
You will hear his namementioned in this story.
So let's get into it.
You ready?
Tracy Clark (04:40):
Yeah, I'm ready.
Blake Howard (04:42):
Why don't you give us a little more backstory and
go ahead and get us briefed in.
Tracy Clark (04:51):
What does it mean for a tech trailblazer to go
back to basics?
In 2024, PayPal launched avisual rebrand with Pentagram
that dropped its overlappingdouble P monogram and bright
gradients in favor of a flatter,cleaner, more modern identity.
The new look is unmistakablydigital, responsive, legible,
and streamlined.
(05:11):
But for a brand that helpeddefine online payments, the
change sparked debate.
Had PayPal sharpened itspresence or lost its soul?
Founded in 1998 and launched aspart of a merger between
Confinity and X.com, yes, that'sElon Musk's early digital
finance venture, PayPal becamesynonymous with online
(05:32):
transactions, eBay purchases,and the early gig economy.
It was one of the first truefintech brands, building trust
around speed, security, andaccess long before fintech was a
buzzword.
Its brand followed suit,evolving from the utilitarian
serif of its startup days to themore tech-forward 2007 refresh.
(05:53):
And then again in 2014, whenFuse Project introduced a
tighter logotype and the nowiconic double P symbol.
Throughout the 2010s, PayPalused confident, people-first
advertising to cement itsposition as both friendly and
forward-thinking, from campaignslike Powering the People
Economy to the Super Bowl spotslike New Money, which formed the
(06:16):
company as an alternative tooutdated financial systems.
Now, fast forward to 2024, andthe landscape is way more
crowded and more corporate.
PayPal's rebrand leans intosimplicity, aiming for authority
in a field it once helpedinvent— But reactions were
mixed.
Some saw a confident evolutionwhile others lamented a loss of
(06:38):
warmth and distinctiveness.
What happens when a two-decadefintech pioneer embraces
minimalism?
And is the balance betweenlegacy and boldness harder to
strike when you go fromdisruptor to ubiquity?
Let's find out.
Blake Howard (06:59):
Alright, let's talk about the new PayPal brand
identity.
Hopefully you've already seenit.
If not, you can go toachangerbrand.com where we have
it featured.
The rebrand marks a starkchange in the visual history of
the brand.
The new custom type PayPal Prois kind of the star of the show.
It's a customized version ofFutura and is bold and slightly
(07:20):
unexpected in the fintech space.
Another big change is the useof the familiar overlapping P
symbol.
It's still around, but kind ofdemoted.
It's decoupled from the wordmark and just used separately.
There's some really fun motionin the work as well that gives
kind of the simplicity, a lot ofenergy and life.
And even though not everyonefound its simplicity charming,
(07:44):
there was one person who wasreally into it.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (07:47):
So my name can be pronounced two ways.
The way I grew up, uh, And thenthe 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 offunction both as the partner in
(08:14):
charge and the creativedirector.
as well as also part of thedesign team, which is sort of a
role that I take on in many ofthe projects that we lead at the
studio.
You know, this is a big, a
Blake Howard (08:29):
big story that we're going to get into a lot of
work, very complex.
If you had to title it like aheadline, how would you
summarize it in like a singleheadline?
Nothing like starting off witha really hard question.
Hey, Andrea, tell me what's themeaning of life?
(08:51):
Let's
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (08:52):
just get into it.
You know the next 45 minutes ofthis conversation?
Can you just summarize it atthe very start?
Can you design the cover beforewe know the content of the
book?
That's right, yeah.
I would say it's building it asit flies.
(09:12):
at a very high speed with avery close collaboration with
PayPal and every single otherentity around it.
Blake Howard (09:25):
Do you remember the very first time you heard
about the opportunity?
You know, typically the way itworks is you get an email or
back in the day used to be morephone calls, but someone reaches
out and says, Hey, Pentagram,we have an opportunity.
Do you remember when that firsthappened?
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (09:43):
Yeah.
Well, I had just joined as apartner at Pentagram in the New
York office.
And one of my partners, MichaelDeRude, had a longstanding sort
of relationship with the formerVerizon CMO, Diego Scotti, who
was about to move to PayPal asthe general manager.
(10:05):
And Michael is in atransitional period from being a
partner with a team in the NewYork 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 ofluck to sort of speak to him and
(10:28):
use him as a soundboard and getall of the experience that he
has.
But he kind of stopped takingon projects.
And this was one of them.
I had worked with Michael manyyears before as a designer at
Pentagram on MasterCard.
I was part of a different team,Luke Heyman's team, and Luke
(10:51):
Heyman and Michael Beroud cametogether to work on MasterCard.
And as part of that process, Igot to know Michael pretty well
and, you know, was really sortof the years that I spent as a
designer at Pentagram werereally formative.
So Zoom passed, you know, abunch of other chapters in my
career, like opening a studio inNew York City for Design Studio
(11:14):
and running it as a creativedirector and designer.
Then going to Gretel, doingkind of the same role of
creative direction and design.
I get called to become apartner.
And so I joined.
And as I joined, this move fromVerizon to PayPal happens.
And Michael involves me and westart sort of talking about it
(11:38):
with Diego and sort of reallyunderstanding what the future of
PayPal could hold.
Diego has a very interesting, Iwould say, I would even venture
to say visionary, because theway he looks at sort of the
brands that he's been operatingwithin is, is quite connected to
(11:59):
culture.
He's looking at them not justthrough their business function,
which you need to understand,not just through their makeup at
a structural level, theirpresence, but their opportunity,
what they could do, how theycould become.
And our earliest conversationswere really around that.
Where is PayPal at that pointin time?
(12:22):
I sort of did a full audit ofeverything that they had done.
And we just started having aninformed conversation about the
space that they were in, themoment in time they were sort of
occupying, and the culturalmoment in time.
(12:42):
And often, those are the threelayers of depth that you can i
get into um it's sort of thecompany the context and the
culture around it and thecontext involves competition but
also you know aspirationalbrands around them and so on um
and and it was through thoseconversations that we started
(13:03):
sort of thinking about what is aspeculative future for paypal
Blake Howard (13:07):
were they talking to other groups at that point or
was it was it just kind of asingle conversation with
pentagram
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (13:15):
it was a single conversation with
pentagram There were definitelyother interests from other ends
of the business to kind of lookat other studios, but there's a
trust.
And I think that maybe we havea bit forgotten this part that
all great works, all of thegreat projects that happen in
(13:37):
the world, have to rely ontrust.
Trust between the client andthe studio or agency that
they're working with.
And often trust betweenindividuals within those
settings.
I tend to think of these asvery much like collaborations.
I don't call clients sort of myclient.
(13:58):
I really sort of try to embodythe idea that we're
collaborating on something, evenat the scale.
And it changes the entirerelationship because it makes it
so much a little bit more of aback and forth you're not sort
of doling knowledge you're kindof actually trying to listen and
understand because they havethe keys to something that you
(14:19):
don't
Blake Howard (14:19):
so you do that audit and i loved the way you
put it the the context theculture and then i forget the
first c company maybe yeah yeahso you're trying to figure out
all right What's the lay of theland?
And was the, out of that, wasthe problem to solve really
clear?
Like, did you have an insightwhere you're like, okay, here's
the real challenge?
(14:40):
Or did they already have kindof 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 reallyimportant brand in the world
still.
And there are some facts thatare really hard facts in terms
of digital payments globally.
PayPal is the most trusted byfar.
There's no other paymentsystem, including sort of Apple
(15:07):
Pay, which is just sort of awrapper for a lot of things.
You know, the Apple Card is oneof the things that they offer,
but PayPal still remains to thisday as this global presence in
digital payments.
So there was that fact.
There was the fact that theywere also the first to digital
payments.
They pioneered this.
There were really interestingpeople company to begin with,
(15:29):
and they were pushing technologyout.
That sort of ethos had sort ofsolidified into being
comfortable with the things thatthey were doing.
So Diego came in and at thesame time that Alex Chris, the
new CEO, was sort of part ofthat, part of sort of this
renewal at PayPal and the visionthat uh alex really has
(15:52):
established from a business andinnovation sense and really
pushing like diego from a brandand business opportunities but
alex like has the savvy and umreally the the intuition of
where to go next well this isthe state of things as it has
been and you know they have areally well put together brand
(16:14):
Gretel actually had done it theyit's it's absolutely designed
as a system it functions it canget a little repetitive they
were using sort of the samecolors and same things it is not
aspirational it is not one ofthe top 25 brands that everyone
would kind of look at and sortof find sort of inspiring.
(16:38):
And it didn't have the kind offlexibility that would allow
them to take a sort of a bigmedia spin.
And so early on, thoseconversations were happening of,
okay, how do we shift the waythe brand currently feels into
from like FinTech, let's say,and corporate FinTech into a
(17:01):
lifestyle brand?
I think from the get-go, thiswas the conversation.
It's one of the most trustedbrands.
It was one of the mostinnovative brands.
They can be that again.
And they can be a big culturalplayer, 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 opensup the aperture of design range
and sort of starts to...
plant the seed of like, whatdoes that look like?
Because something that's morein the category of like B2B
fintech is going to send youdown a certain route.
But saying no, this needs to bein the upper echelon of just
(17:45):
inspiring brands out in themarket in general.
That's more of a lifestylebrand that gives you a lot of
freedom.
So where did you go from there?
Like once that sort of initialidea 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 designexercise of speculative kind of
brand identity futures, I wouldcall it.
And it's very much sort of, itwas a way to investigate how the
brand identity could evolve andwhere it could go.
(18:23):
There were some sort ofbusiness vision kind of
documents that were shared withus.
We kind of extracted a bit andcreated a bit of the creative
strategy to create a foundationto do the exploration.
But the task was clear is howdo you shift and preserve some
of the equity that PayPal hashad visually, but shifted
(18:47):
drastically into this new spacewhere 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 wouldgo, you start from the symbol,
the logo, the typefaces.
And there are some things thatwere sacred objects.
(19:08):
The PayPal symbol, which we nowcall the monogram, and I'll
explain that in a second, themonogram needed to stay.
it couldn't kind of change fromwhere it is drastically because
it has a lot of equity and ithas almost a decade old kind of
history.
So that object was important tounderstand how you would evolve
(19:30):
it, but everything around itcould change.
And so we sort of exploreddifferent steps starting from,
in these evolutions at thisscale, you have to look at
closer into where it is now orwhere it was then and then
further and further and furtherand further.
And in that process, yougenerate basically different
directions.
(19:50):
And you start discovering whatactually, what opportunities you
can sort of generate byshifting the typist, shifting
the color, shifting, you know,moving away from the graphic
elements.
And so we did that, and then wesort of had conversations
around those directions.
And I think certain things werestarting to feel right.
(20:13):
At that point, Futura was notin the picture, but something
close to Futura, another typistcalled Kabel, which is a
concurrent around that time,when Futura starts that is drawn
in 1920s by Paul Renner.
There's this other typefacethat's also geometric.
It's also a sans, but it's abit friendlier.
It has a couple of quirks.
(20:34):
And I was using something byGeneral Type, which is a foundry
in France called Radion, whichis sort of a revival of that
typeface.
And it was feeling great.
And we learned a ton of thingsfrom that exercise.
But at some point, therealities of being in this new
environment for that core teamand leadership sort of became
(21:00):
more than apparent that itwasn't the exact moment to take
on the full rebrand then.
So after sort of this exerciseof exploring We did start
sharing it with other ends ofPayPal and having discussions
around, is this the righttypeface?
Is this the right set ofcolors?
(21:20):
What are the requirements?
And we spoke to the productleadership and the brand team
leadership.
And it really started sort ofbecoming more real.
But as I said, after an initialperiod 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 ahill, getting budget approval or
executive leadership buy-in iseverything.
And all could be lost if itstalls out too much.
Andrea went on to say that eventhough they lost the momentum
on the bigger rebrand, they wereable to stay connected on other
(21:58):
projects like designing thelook and feel for an awards
program and a few others.
These smaller assignments keptthat relationship strong and
allowed them to evolve the brandfrom the inside out.
And like a late night doomscroll, they kept getting deeper
and deeper within the PayPalecosystem.
And eventually the main rebrandeffort returned.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (22:21):
Yeah, no.
So in the initial work, wejust, we got to a point where
certain things were selected andcertain things were actually
feeling more right.
But I think in the, you know,when you pause things,
especially that thread, you gainclarity.
And so when you look back atit, the typeface that we had
chosen, it wasn't feeling right.
(22:42):
It sort of had a tone thatmaybe 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 thatit's a It's a brand that is for
everyone, right?
Like everyone can use it andit's welcoming to everyone.
But I think what they'vestruggled with is the idea of
(23:05):
becoming kind of welcoming in avisual way.
Like, how do you do that?
And how friendly are you?
You know, think of the namePayPal.
the PAL needs to be defined.
Are you sort of a PAL as in aneighbor that I once in a while
kind of rely on and so on?
Or are you my PAL, likeliterally one of my best friends
that I kind of can have aconversation?
(23:26):
That texture of PAL isconnected to the texture of the
brand identity.
And so I think defining that ina typographic space, for
instance, it's like, I think theearly work was very much like,
sort of, hey, I'm your bestfriend, I'm here, like, quirky,
and I'll tell you jokes, andI'll be there.
And I think as we sort ofrestarted the project of the
(23:51):
brand identity, we sort of hadthe clarity that, okay, this is
a bit too friendly and a bit tooplayful.
We need to elevate quite a bitand sort of become a bit more
aspiring.
And that's when Futura cameback into the picture.
You sort of can speak about itin so many ways, right?
(24:12):
Like you could say, look, wedid an incredible amount of
strategy, blah, blah, blah.
And then it led to these set ofthings and so on.
But ultimately, you're stillkind of deciding on the same
elements that everyone needs touse.
You're designing on a typeface,you're designing on a color
system, you're deciding on amotion system, a way in which
(24:34):
compositions, layouts work.
All of these decisions compoundinto an attitude.
And the attitude is kind of themost critical thing you could
try and design.
In our case, Futura, which issort of a typeface that is
almost 100 years old, it wasreleased in 1927, has been a
(24:56):
participant in culture for thatlength of time.
And it has been, you know, it'sway older than Helvetica, for
instance, and it's been bakedinto every single end of
culture.
It's been used by majorfilmmakers and also fashion
houses.
It's a typeface that lives inmany different places.
(25:19):
including the moon, becausewhen Apollo 11 was like sort of
designed, all the plaques,everything about it, the
patches, everything had Futurain it.
So it's a typeface thatliterally has been sort of
permeated the globe and also themoon, I guess, sort of we've
traveled abroad with it out ofthe sphere.
(25:41):
So It's a really significanttech phase.
And when you're sort ofdeciding on that, I think the
initial audit of the space wasreally critical.
Everyone that is in that spaceis using either a grotesque,
which is a sense of like ahelvetica derivative or even
(26:02):
precursor to your helvetica.
So they all are using a versionof that.
just to really dumb it down ina way.
And nobody was using thisgeometric kind of sans-serif
like Futura.
And when you look at the top 30brands, there's very few and
(26:22):
far between.
So from even just an imprint, atypographic imprint, you have
an opportunity to distance thisbrand from everyone else.
But that is not the only thing.
you can do, like, there's awhole life around it that we
dove into.
That's just the criticaldecision early on that from that
initial work, then sort of ledto really understanding why we
(26:50):
should make the decisions thatwe made.
The typeface was one piece.
And although it seems like soatomic, as an element, it's the
core foundation ofcommunication.
But it's grounded by thestrategic intent that they're a
brand that should feeltrustworthy.
Well, Techface has been aroundfor 100 years.
(27:13):
Optimistic.
There's a basic geometry.
Everyone can access this, theseforms.
And sort of simple.
Those are the three kind ofcore principles that were
guiding lots of the work andlots of the decision making at
the top level.
sometimes is actually a chorusof decisions.
(27:33):
It's not just one sort ofbullet that kind of cuts
through.
It's actually a vision of anintent that we're moving into a
lifestyle kind of space, and weneed a leaner and really well
calibrated system.
And so how do you obtain that?
Well, you need to do theseevaluations.
(27:54):
Number one, you need to makesure that whatever way you're
communicating words that it'sunique and stands apart from
everything.
And that the second thing isthat whatever color imprint you
have also is unique and standsapart from everything.
The question on the yellow plusblue was a big one.
(28:14):
We explored changing the yellowinto orange.
We explored changing it alltogether into an adjacent to
blue, which something like agreen or a teal.
And so we looked at anextensive amount.
And then at some point, sort ofjust realized that, well,
there's an issue with the symboland how it was sort of treated
(28:37):
before with color, is that thetop P and the bottom P weren't
really creating a great amountof color contrast.
The idea is that the top P inthe previous logo kind of felt
like it was sitting on top ofthe bottom P.
They weren't overlapping andcreating something new.
They were actually...
kind of just pasting on top ofeach other.
(28:59):
And so by correcting that, weintroduced a lighter blue in the
bottom P, and then a mediumblue in the center, and then a
dark blue, which was anevolution of the blue that they
had.
By doing that, you createsomething that in color theory
is called continuous contrast,which is a very similar theory
(29:19):
that we applied to MasterCard.
It's just a simple positionmaking from color that Two
colors can have a third color inthe middle that creates the
idea that the two colors haveoverlapped in some way.
And so by doing that, we sortof introduced the new color
system.
And by just that, there's threeblues.
(29:41):
PayPal has always been blue.
And they were the first in thedigital payment system.
Well, why not double down onthat?
Why not create a system thatuses blue as the underpinning
element?
Blake Howard (29:55):
How are you engaging with PayPal along this
journey?
Are these really quick, smallshares and you're getting
alignment with PayPal?
Is everything you just wentthrough, was that a big
milestone presentation or was itsmall breadcrumbs where this is
just coalescing as you
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (30:16):
go?
No, there was a bigpresentation.
Actually, in that time of thepause, a sort of an excellent
new player joined the picture.
They hired a new CMO, who's thecurrent CMO, Jeff Seeley, who
came from a history of being inother sort of brands in that
(30:40):
space, like Cash App, forinstance, and had a great
understanding of brand anddesign and so on.
Michael and I were actually inEngland and we had the
presentation ready and so on.
And we flew back to New Yorkand straight from the airport
into the PayPal headquarters andmet with Diego and Jeff and
(31:02):
just presented sort of threeroutes of this renewed kind of
vision.
And in presenting that, we hadthe first one That was exactly
what it is now.
The second one, which played alot with angles and the idea
(31:22):
that people could commit to thatslant that they had in the
name.
And what if the entire systemis just sort of about speed and
connection and so on.
And then a third one thatplayed with ideas of openness
and sort of that strategicintent.
Surely enough, we start goingthrough the first one and go,
go, go.
(31:43):
And, you know, you're sort ofreading the room and there's
like a good reaction.
We end on the summary slide ofthe first one and we still have
two more to go.
One of them stands up and sortof just offers their hand.
They're like, you guys did it.
To me and Michael.
And it was like.
(32:04):
It was kind of a surrealmoment.
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 businessdecision.
Of doing a large media buy.
(32:25):
By September.
And launch a campaign called.
PayPal everywhere in which theywould transcend the digital
space and go into the physicalspace.
And so with this sort ofdeadline looming, they were
feeling like none of the piecesof the previous identity were
working in their favor tocommunicate this new ideas and
(32:48):
energy and sort of presence andculture.
They had also made a deal withWill Ferrell at that point.
And it's like things werelining up, but the visual tools
and the brand identity that Ihad was not Diego and Jeff
Sealy.
And they kind of talked throughit a little bit.
And then they were like, well,let's see the rest, you know,
and sort of we go through therest.
(33:09):
And I'm just accelerating asfast as I can through
everything.
There's nothing to see like,you know, but we do get to a
place where that decision ismade in that room.
Blake Howard (33:23):
Just like that, Andrea and the team are in
business.
The PayPal execs were notmessing around.
They were hitting add to cartand checking out right away.
And the pros at Pentagramweren't going to talk past the
sell.
This is one main benefit from atight timeline.
Go too fast and yeah, youshortchange the creative
(33:44):
process, maybe some buy-in oroverall quality, but go too slow
and you risk losing momentum.
And somewhere in the sweetspot, is the deal of the day,
decisiveness and a littlepressure.
Okay, speaking of time, it'stime for a quick break.
When we come back, we get moreinto this tight timeline and how
Andrea feels about some of theonline criticism.
(34:07):
All that and more after thebreak.
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(34:50):
Standards scales with you.
Check it out atwww.standards.site, that's
S-I-T-E, and finally, bring someorder 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 ourproducing partner for this show.
We specialize in helpinggrowing brands take their
identity to the next level.
If you need help clarifyingyour message or standing out in
the market, be sure to visit usat matchstick.com.
That's M-A-T-C-H-S-T-I-C dotcom.
(35:29):
And if you're enjoying this andother 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 unbelievablyfast executive approval
immediately in the room on roundone.
And this is rare in myexperience.
Often clients need days orweeks of deliberation or
litigation to socialize and getfeedback from colleagues and
staff and family members and itcan go on and on.
(36:06):
So the speed of this wasslightly shocking to me.
But what was funny is it didn'tseem that rare to Andrea.
Clearly, I'm doing somethingwrong or he's just doing
something right.
He actually had two insights onwhy 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 spokeabout before, right?
Trusting collaborations thatcan be really powerful and that
trust It needs to be unwaveringin a way.
And then the other factor isdecisiveness, not hesitating in
(36:42):
situations where you could behesitating.
And if I were to describePayPal before sort of this group
of leadership came in, theywere hesitating all the time.
Like they were second guessing.
And it's because you don't havea clarity of vision.
When you have that, then you'relike, okay, how do I make it?
Okay, I need to make thisdecision, this other decision,
this other decision.
(37:03):
And you also startunderstanding 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, ofcourse, it's like a much larger
discussion because it kind ofimpacts everything.
And so changing the logo,changing the colors has an
implication all the way down tothe checkout button, which is
(37:24):
millions and millions andmillions of dollars.
I think the intent in that roomwas, okay, let's do it.
And so right after thatmeeting, I was supposed to go
back to the office and to thepentagram office in Gramercy.
And surely enough, they werelike, okay, can you jump on the
phone with publicists and so on?
And so just onboarding everyoneto a round one identity that
(37:50):
that was you know i mean the i'msure like many other studios
but you know i'll speak formyself like round ones look real
but you know there's stillthings to figure out because
they're still round two threeapplications 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 initialround and they say like we like
it There's typically so muchnuanced little work to build it
all out that, you know, youdon't get like an official
approval for months later.
I think it's so interestingthat the decision was made.
You have an executive buy-in,which is the hard, usually
(38:29):
that's the top of the mountain.
That's the hardest thing toachieve.
But in this case, you had itright away and then they were
like, go.
And then you had to geteveryone else on board.
Was there resistance as you didthat?
Like, were people questioningyou?
Should the symbol be locked upwith the mark?
Are you sure it should beseparated?
Are you sure this is the rightcolor?
As you tried to align othergroups, other teams, did you get
(38:52):
any resistance as you were sortof sharing it out?
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (38:55):
Well, I think there was a clarity
around why those decisions werehappening, right?
So number one, the decision tounlock the usual tech kind of
couplet of symbol plus wordmarkwhich is true of Spotify,
Airbnb, sort of these techgiants that created brands that
(39:18):
really worked, worked thatrelationship from a logo
perspective.
The decision to decouple thiscame from an insight on sort of
just general culture.
You have fashion houses, carmakers, and tons of other types
of hardware brands that usetheir logo for Like when I say
(39:42):
logo, I mean the word mark.
Use the word mark forcommunication and then the
symbol for the product that theysort of are creating.
I would say the things thatwere kind of challenging were
maybe the typeface to a certaindegree.
The proportions of Futura arevery different to today's
standards compared to any numberof other typefaces that are
(40:07):
used today.
And so The question became, youknow, do we commission a text
version, a sort of a UI version,which in fact we did.
And we're currently kind ofworking through and will be
released this year and thenimplemented into the product
soon.
The product team is currentlytesting it and so far it's been
just great.
(40:27):
It kind of creates thiscontinuity from the top level.
where we use PayPal Pro, thecustom type that is based on
Futura, to PayPal Pro UI, whichcan really perform and
outperforms actually SF, Butwe've been working really
closely with the Type Foundryline two, which has made some of
(40:48):
the greatest hits incontemporary sort of culture of
type.
And they're really excellent.
And so this is the first timein the history, in the hundred
year old history, where a textversion of Futura is worked.
It's a really tricky kind ofvery technical and so on, very
nerdy.
So I'll spare you thosedetails.
(41:08):
But the attitude that Futuraachieves is because of its
proportions, of course.
As soon as you start changingthat, the attitude changes.
But we've managed to kind ofwork through a version that
actually sort of addresses allthe concerns.
Direction is approved.
We go and let's make it.
The first question was like,well, look, this is not a great
(41:30):
kind of typeface for product asit stands today, you know, and
we we've sort of navigated thedecisions around that.
And there's a little bit ofresistance, but not I wouldn't
say like a stopping point.
And the thing that happens whenyou're speaking, I think in the
best projects that have been onwhere the true transformations
(41:51):
of brands, like this one, if youhave a direct line or the
approval from the top, then lotsof 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 agood team player and be part of
(42:12):
this.
I think what happened iswhatever amount of resistance
got overtaken by the fact thatfrom June to September, so three
months, they needed to launchan 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 leftto figure it all out.
So they had weeklycollaborative sessions with the
core brand team to iron outdifferent elements within the
system like specific values ofthe blues or what blues could be
(42:51):
used where and why.
They did some testing which Ithought was interesting to
validate which colorcombinations perform the best
and how the PayPal button shouldevolve.
Luckily for them, the new colordirection and the simple word
mark, surprisingly, outperformedevery other iteration of the
previous brand identity.
(43:12):
This is also when they startedto explore the motion system as
well.
They were inspired by commonpayment gestures, like the tap
and pay, and how they couldsuggest 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 toget the CVV, or other common
digital gestures and motionssuch as swipes.
(43:33):
Fast forward a few months,Pentagram, PayPal, and many
other agencies practically movedheaven and earth to launch in
September of 2024.
The new brand identity debutedwith an all-new PayPal credit
card and this fun spot with WillFerrell by BBH USA.
Tracy Clark (43:54):
Did you just pay with PayPal?
Yeah.
Now you can use it in storesand 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 anycategory you choose.
Blake Howard (44:11):
The news coverage started immediately.
From fast company to creativeboom to brand new, mock-ups of
out-of-home ads, smartwatcheswith motion, shopping bags, and
a fun little launch videopopulated those stories.
And faster than a one-clickcheckout, the criticism came.
And all in all, it was mostlyan attack on simplicity.
(44:34):
Listen to some of theseheadlines.
PayPal has a new logo thatmakes it look just like
Speaker 04 (44:40):
everything
Blake Howard (44:40):
else.
A symptom of a troublingcultural 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 outpersonality or oversimplified
their brand assets, likeGoDaddy, Petco, or Johnson &
Johnson.
Of course, I had to getAndrea'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 brandidentity is not in the moment of
its release.
It's actually how it evolvesover time, right?
And so if you look at some ofthe most powerful identities
that have ever been made,they've grown over time.
(45:28):
And there are somewhat oforganisms, visual organisms that
can adapt, but have a coresense of self.
I think we've done this here,and it's evolving, and it's
distinct from everyone elsearound it.
You can't ask for more thanthat.
Sometimes we just get enamoredby the bells and whistles of an
animation or some great artdirection in a film.
(45:51):
It's not that.
These are the tools, and thetools are so simple and yet
flexible and powerful, and theycan do a lot.
So there's that one piece thatI think, to me, time is going to
really...
mark the success of this and ithink in time in a very
different way than other peoplebecause i my partners are some
(46:13):
of them are in their 60s their70s they've been in the industry
for 30 plus years um and thatgives you a different sense i'm
not trying to compete with likeyou know the rest that is like
just thinking year to yeartrying to release whatever like
I'm thinking of things thatlast.
And I want to, and I think atthe core of Pentagram, we think
(46:33):
of building things that willstand the test of time.
The other thing is that there'sthis idea that simplicity is a
little bit scorned, flatteningthings, right?
There's this whole like kind ofmeme of like, oh, all these
logos changed from this to SansSerifs and so on.
And I think to some degree, weshould be vigilant about this,
(46:56):
right?
When Burberry changed fromtheir previous logo to the
second previous logo to like theSans Serif version, probably
was a misstep.
There's a huge reason why thesekind of serifs and the history
of Burberry specificallyassociated with that is really
powerful and should be evolved.
So going into geometric sans orhumanist sans actually is not
(47:23):
that interesting.
It's understandable, but it'snot that interesting.
And Hence, the step beyondthat, they sort of changed back
into a redrawn version of anoriginal sort of Burberry serve.
It looks fantastic.
It's amazing.
And then the whole graphicsystem around it is great.
So as a brand identity, they'vekind of reactivated something
that was unique to them.
(47:44):
If you look at PayPal, theydidn't have this sort of long
history of like kind of...
i don't know beautiful kind ofmarks that are very distinct it
was an italicized version of ageneric kind of geometric sense
kind of it's in some ways whenthe criticism came of the new
identity has flattenedeverything else that came before
(48:06):
it's like well look at what wasbefore it's you know it's as i
said a very solid identityespecially the the last one that
gretel did but It's notrevolutionizing visual culture
in any possible way.
It doesn't have this wholehistory of existence and why it
matters to exist that way.
And so I think, to me, all ofthese kind of critical views
(48:30):
miss one point, which is easilyvisible by this.
If you do the thoughtexperiment of, say, Apple
doesn't exist or exists in adifferent form, and Apple
releases their brand identitytoday, They just you see it on
brand new and you sort of seehere's the logo.
It's an evolution of the thingthat came before.
And then here's the set of typeis San Francisco.
(48:52):
And and then you see sort ofit's black and white.
It's all minimal.
It's all done this way.
The apps look exactly the sameway.
The website's kind of and thenthere's good art direction here
and there.
You see that and you're goingto say, well, this is too
simple.
It's not a great identity.
It's not good.
And, yeah, of course, like wewant as a graphic designers, we
(49:15):
want to make things explode.
And like, you know, we want tomake things that kind of make
turn your head turn.
The thing is, a graphic systemsometimes like a brand identity
system doesn't need to do that.
It can be the vehicle ontowhich maybe the window onto
which you can project incrediblethings.
ideas just like apple doesright like apple uses art
(49:39):
direction and photography andmotion to really activate these
things but the brand itself isvery slim and so what we've
created very intentionally so isthe simplest version of that
identity
Blake Howard (49:53):
that moment that they were decisive started
probably back in the mastercardproject where They were building
trust and the reputation ofPentagram 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 thatpresentation.
(50:15):
So it wasn't like you just walkin and you have that trust and
the work's killer and they loveit and they choose it.
It's the progression.
It's the journey.
of every little touch pointalong the way, having a point of
view saying how importantdesign is and how to think
about, you know, selecting atypeface that's got a history
and has a cultural relevancetoday.
And there's a distinctopportunity in the market.
(50:37):
You know, it's all of thoselittle strategic ideas that
layered up to that moment.
And I think that some designersthink you just got to crush
that one meeting, but it's, it'sall, all of the, the
interactions all the way up toit.
And I just think that'ssomething 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 otherway i've heard it and i want to
attribute it like i'm big intocrediting sources um and so um
it's it's uh actually briancollins who says um don't sort
of i mean i'm i'm gonnaparaphrase here um he says it's
(51:18):
not about the big yes it's aboutthe hundred yeses, small yeses,
right?
And it's exactly what youdescribed.
And I think just intuitivelyspeaking, being in rooms with
Michael, being in rooms withother Pentagram partners, you
(51:38):
sort of learn, I think almost byosmosis, that it's always just
a conversation.
You're always just talking.
in a dialogue with someoneelse, whether it's a room of 20
people or it's a room with threepeople, you are literally
thinking through thepossibilities in the future.
(51:59):
And so the better you listenand the more you sort of deeply
embed yourself into thatcontext, the more you can do the
thing that you're known for,which is create a visual
equivalent of the opportunitythat Liza had.
I think the trust is built fromall of those, as you said,
(52:21):
little moments.
I mean, it's sort of inconversation every time anything
is kind of shared.
It's reflected upon and thensort 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 timelinepressure isn't a bad thing.
In this case, it helped quickdecisions from the client and
the round one work stayedintact.
This was made possible becauseof the level of trust PayPal had
in Pentagram.
And it's worth unpacking that alittle bit.
(53:01):
They didn't earn that trustwith a perfect presentation or
saying the exact right thingwhen defending the work.
No.
They earned that trust overyears.
It started all the way backwith the MasterCard rebrand, and
then they maintained it withevery little interaction from
that day on.
I almost think about it like achess game, of which I don't
(53:22):
really play or even fullyunderstand, but I know that
every little move matters.
Every interaction with aclient, 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'vemade all of the right moves, The
client fully believes in youand the solution you're
presenting.
(53:43):
And in this case, it wasCheckmate in round one.
And let's talk about thesimplicity topic.
Clients and armchair criticsalike push back on simple
solutions.
They just do.
And I get it.
Sometimes as a creative, I feelthat pull for more as well.
You want to push fordistinction in brand and you
(54:04):
want to have expressiveness asan artist.
There's real value in that.
But the topic of simplicitybeckons 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 thebusiness?
Yes.
So judge the success of anidentity based on how well it
(54:27):
serves the brand and solvedwhatever problem was at hand.
The goal isn't always to makesomething as expressive as
possible.
There is usually an opportunityto help a brand, be more
identifiable, but that isn'talways the priority.
And in this case, the goal wasto transition from a fintech
brand to a lifestyle one.
(54:47):
And in order to do that, theyneeded a big visual range,
almost like a fashion brandwhere the mark sits back in the
background and allows theproducts to shine.
However, PayPal's intentionisn't always to take a backseat
as a brand.
They're building from thisfoundation and will find more
ways to add distinction, inillustration, motion, and more
(55:10):
in the future.
Andrea went on to say that weare just bombarded every day
with visual culture, and therecan be this desire to hit a
higher and higher note to standout.
And he's all for that oncertain projects when it serves
the business first, and then thevisual culture or the industry
of branding second.
But you shouldn't get those twoideas twisted.
(55:30):
Andrea gave a lot of credit tothe PayPal team for their trust
and their decisiveness, butThere was one other part to the
story that he felt like deservedcredit.
Andreas Trabucco-Campos (55:40):
The other credit that I want to give
is to the work itself.
I'm fortunate that it happensquite often.
It's not a rarity.
Many identities have just beensolidified like in round one.
In the round one, I presentusually two to three concepts
and no more.
They're all well built and theyall offer an insight from a
(56:01):
strategic standpoint visualizingto design.
And so the forms make senseevery decision made.
makes sense and it becomes aquestion of attitude what
attitude do we want to have youknow we want to be more sort of
upstream or playful or daringirreverent you know what have
you like it's it's kind of thatbecomes a conversation and often
(56:24):
there's clarity on the otherend yeah no we we are an
irreverent brand we want tobreak things or no we want to be
for everyone but still elevatedand so at this through that
thinking it's it's kind of wherei think decisions can happen
because you you can enable aroom to have that conversation
as opposed to have aconversation around oh this is
(56:46):
the right typeface and so onwhich i know i spoke a while a
lot about this this type ofthing but um To me, that's a
side note in theseconversations.
It's a decision that I need tounderstand fully.
I sort of prize part of my workto really understand the
cultural valence of every singleelement that we bring in and
(57:09):
sort of the historicaloccurrence and what it means to
use it in culture today.
At the same time, with a clientin that room, you really should
be pointing towards the futureand sort of making sure that
it's connected with everythingthat's present and everywhere,
their trajectory, where they'regoing, their business goals,
their strategic goals.
And so that enables thatdecision.
(57:31):
So, yeah, I mean, it's bothrare and not.
I've been lucky that that issomething that happens.
And I attribute it to the typesof collaborations, the types of
people that are in that room,but also how the shape of that
conversation is based on the workand how that is shaped in itself.
Blake Howard (57:56):
Okay that's a wrap on the PayPal rebrand story.
Special thanks to Andrea andPentagram for giving us the
inside scoop on this change.
Hey, and season six is justgetting started.
Coming up next episode, we arecovering two things that I love,
branding and soccer.
We get the inside play-by-playwith Justin Au from Gretel and
(58:19):
Milo Kowalski with NYC FC, howthey cautiously changed the boys
in blue beloved badge for theMLS team.
A big shout out to ourincredible team.
Today's episode was edited andscored by Adam Audio, that's
A-T-A-M Audio, produced byBrianna Belcher Stephanie Kim
(58:39):
designed this episode's artworkand a special thanks to Tracy
Clark for our briefing I'm yourhost Blake Howard signing off
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