Tim Chan

Lincoln Property Company, a renowned real estate firm, has introduced its new brand and visual identity, marking a significant milestone as its first rebrand in its 60-year history.

Rooted in the theme of connections, the brand underscores Lincoln's forward-looking vision and dedication to delivering tailored, solution-driven experiences for its clientele. The unveiling encompasses a redesigned logo, a vibrant color palette, and cohesive design language, all crafted to mirror Lincoln's pledge to evolve with the ever-changing dynamics of commercial real estate.

With a focus on three key pillars—human touch at scale, entrepreneurial leadership, and expert guidance—the new brand positions Lincoln as a company that thrives on establishing strong connections, delivering transformative solutions, and providing unparalleled expertise to clients worldwide. The new brand serves as a cornerstone, reflecting the firm's values and strengths, and highlighting its distinctiveness as a company that prioritizes connection, collaboration, and community.

Here are two design directions developed for the rebranding of Lincoln Property Company. Please refer to the other section for the final logo and design language for the newly rebranded Lincoln.

Logo and Design Language

Direction 1
Here, two strong shapes come together to form an H. The idea of partnership is suggested. It’s about adding something (creativity, strategic thinking) to something else (products) to make something entirely new and unique.

Direction 2
No other company combines the reach, resources and talent of HALO. HALO provides a full spectrum of ideas and solutions, from promotional items to employee incentive and recognition programs. This concept uses a dense pattern of vertical lines to express the depth and breadth of what HALO offers — as well as the dazzling creativity you deliver. For HALO, creativity comes in many colors. Breakthrough impact happens when these “colors” are combined in unusual ways.

The Atlas SP logo embodies their commitment to global client partnership. Its five points symbolize the continents they serve, guiding clients toward innovative and bespoke solutions.

The gaps within both the symbol and logotype depict the connections formed with clients, from processes to people. It radiates modernity, sophistication, and underscores the value of partnership.

Creating the space for inspiration

In recent years, Tishman Speyer has emerged as a leading force in global real estate, combining expertise in development, design, construction, property management, and investment management. To stand out in this crowded, fiercely competitive field, the company needed to connect powerfully with tenants, the broker community, lenders and investors.

Research insights led to a new brand idea — “creating the space for inspiration” — that encapsulates the higher value proposition Tishman Speyer is able to deliver and what this brings to its global tenants. Developing a compelling and unique marketing campaign to communicate what set the firm apart in a crowded and very competitive industry.

Leveraging brand to reflect and sustain a law firm’s rapid growth

Despite gaining significant traction in areas such as IP and biotechnology, Kansas City-based law firm Lathrop Gage still projected a Midwest-centric brand focused on traditional practices. Interviews revealed that clients appreciate the ability of Lathrop Gage attorneys to put their legal issues in the context of their most important business objectives.

The new Lathrop Gage brand is built around the concept of “seeing beyond” — beyond purely legal and regulatory constraints … beyond siloed practices … beyond conventional approaches. It positions the firm as a proactive contributor to a client’s success, trusted advisors who are consulted before a legal issue arises because of their unique perspective on how the law can be a catalyst for growth.

Clarifying a brand’s value for audiences across the healthcare spectrum

For over 20 years, CDISC was the only organization focused on developing and advancing clinical research data standards across geographies, disciplines, and research studies. The new brand focused on the fundamental role the organization played: the critical facilitator of clarity in clinical research data. Crystalized in a new tagline — “Clear Data. Clear Impact.” — CDISC’s value and higher purpose were brought to the forefront.

CDISC’s success is reliant on its ability to convene its community of volunteers and organizations across the globe to co-create the data standards. This cornerstone idea of collaboration was brought to life through the brand’s visual and verbal system. The brand’s proprietary and dynamic pattern visualizes the interconnectedness and expansiveness of collective ideas.

Rebranding a payments technology pioneer to confront market disruptors

Facing a rising tide of market disruptors, Verifone needed a cohesive and consistent brand platform that could communicate a powerful value proposition to the world’s top merchants, banks and resellers.

It’s not about the box. It’s about the people behind the box. While competitors focused on the features of their products, research revealed that customers were more interested in how payments technology could help them grow their business. But they were unsure where the industry was headed and lacked a roadmap for how to invest. In this marketplace, Verifone had a unique advantage: the knowledge and problem-solving strength of its people. The new brand is built on the ability of Verifone’s engineers and product developers to transform payments technology from a cost of doing business to a driver of growth.

Repositioning a cybersecurity technology innovator to capture market share from entrenched legacy technology firms

Despite its position as the worldwide industry leader, SailPoint struggled to connect with a significant portion of the market: large corporate buyers who did not prioritize identity management as a critical IT need. SailPoint needed a brand that would illuminate the importance of identity management while cementing SailPoint’s role as a leader in this space.

The new SailPoint brand is built around the notion of what companies can achieve when they harness the full power of identity. The “power of identity” concept informs the entire new brand, from audience-segmented messaging to a powerful design language that spotlights the power of identity to transform security into a lever for business success.

Powerfully connecting with consumers and caregivers following a merger of three hospitals

CarePoint Health, formed through the merger of three hospitals in Hudson County, NJ, offers an innovative model of healthcare delivery. The new brand is built around the concept of “360 Degrees of Coordinated Care,” which puts the patient at the center of a network of caregivers.

The new name, CarePoint Health, offers a concise distillation of the brand, emphasizing both “care” and a highly focused, single “point” of access.

The brand was launched through a synchronized marketing campaign, including a print, online and outdoor advertising campaign to quickly raise brand awareness.

Rebranding a 100-year-old association to connect to a global audience

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is a venerable organization whose members include the world’s best-known business schools. AACSB needed to connect with a more youthful, global audience and communicate a value proposition that would resonate beyond academia to connect with corporations.

A 360-degree research initiative revealed that what members most appreciate about AACSB is the connections it provides: to colleges in other regions and countries, to business executives, to new ideas.  Encapsulated by a tagline — “Business Education. Connected” — the new brand positions AACSB as a global community of educators committed to developing leaders for a world that doesn’t yet exist.

Uniting four healthcare technology players under a new, unified brand

The combination of four leading players in the fast-growing healthcare payments space required a new brand, one that reflected the shared strengths of the individual companies while laddering up to a unified and compelling value proposition for payers, providers and patients.

This led to a brand idea focused less on the unique experience of working with a company that treats every client as its top client. It also led to a new name for the company: Zelis Healthcare, a reflection of the spirit and dedication of its people. Encapsulated as The Zelis Experience, the new brand has helped to unite the four companies into one and connected powerfully with a national client base.

Creating an entirely new brand in the highly competitive district energy market

The $1.25 billion sale of Veolia’s district energy group to a private equity firm, Antin Infrastructure Partners, created an independent leader in a highly competitive market. To realize the benefits of its new status and sole focus on providing best-in-class district energy solutions, the company needed a brand and a name that differentiated it from the competition and conveyed the dynamic nature and huge potential of the district energy model.

We recommended a new name for the company, Vicinity Energy, to emphasize both the highly localized nature of the company’s district energy networks and the close relationship and responsive service customers can expect to receive from Vicinity employees. The visual identity we developed for Vicinity alludes to the sustainability of the company’s solutions, as well as the proximity of its services and employees.

Repositioning a longstanding brand to fully leverage new, transformative acquisitions

Guggenheim Partners needed a new brand to reflect its emergence into the major leagues. Research revealed that Guggenheim Partners was most admired for a unique combination of traditional values (dating back to its founders, the legendary Guggenheim family) and forward-looking insights. 

Crystallized in a tagline, “Innovative Perspectives, Enduring Values,” the new Guggenheim Partners brand adopts a unique visual style that combines photojournalistic images of its people with bold images of the markets it serves. A synchronized marketing program deployed the new design language across print and digital platforms, including a comprehensive marketing collateral system.

Branding a commercial finance leader for accelerated growth

For more than a century, CIT has been the financing backbone of America’s small and midsize businesses. While CIT serves companies in many vertical markets, what unites all of them is a powerful desire to grow. The new brand, distilled in a tagline, Put Knowledge to Work, underscores these deeply-held beliefs: that the people of CIT are uniquely knowledgeable about their clients’ business, and that they are willing to roll up their sleeves to help them grow.

An advertising campaign translates the brand into an entirely new language of portmanteaux — invented words that combine the multiple facets of CIT’s value proposition. From sales support materials to content marketing, all communications channels work together to emphasize that thought capital is as powerful a driver of growth as financial capital.

Infusing a legal brand with ingenuity to communicate its true difference in the marketplace.

With a singular focus on labor and employment (L&E) law, Littler is able to leverage that depth of experience to meet the hyper-specific needs of its clients, providing the right solution, no matter what L&E issue they face. With bold thinking that rejects the status quo and strives to find better solutions by bringing together bright minds and groundbreaking technology, Littler leverages innovation to benefit its clients.

And in an industry rife with claims of “innovation,” at Littler, it’s about a completely different approach to the practice of law, with ingenuity driving the way they think about problems, the way they leverage creativity, the courage they bring to be out ahead of the pack with new ways of working and shaping the industry.

Preparing an innovative not-for-profit for the next phase of growth

Cure Violence is a teaching, training, research and assessment non-governmental organization focused on a health approach to urban violence prevention: treat it as an “epidemic” that can be “cured” much like an outbreak of disease. After demonstrating the success of this innovative epidemiological approach, the organization prepared to replicate the model in cities across America and globally.

The new brand focuses on optimism rather than fear. Language and imagery, which used to convey a sense of alarm, now communicate hope and success. The new name for the organization, originally known as CeaseFire, embodies the positive nature of the new brand.

Converting a professional services leader's positioning from tactical to strategic

Brookfield’s target decision makers — chief human resources officers at global companies — wanted to elevate their stature by being recognized as strategic contributors to the success of the enterprise.

Prospective clients wanted assurances that their relocation partner had a commitment to strong cultural values that mirrored their own. The visual language showcases the people of Brookfield, emphasizing that the connections between them — and with clients — help to unleash the power of talent mobility.

2014 – 2016

Through Community TeamWorks, the people of Goldman Sachs work in partnership with nonprofit organizations around the world on team-based volunteer projects to help them achieve their mission. From revitalizing community spaces to mentoring future leaders to nurturing small businesses, Community TeamWorks enables their employees to make a meaningful difference in communities.

To encourage greater employee participation in Community TeamWorks, a comprehensive employee engagement program centered around high-impact posters in the firm’s global locations. Diversity Week was promoted in a branded campaign that solicited definitions of diversity from the Goldman Sachs workforce.

Taking on the global leaders and building a challenger brand to accelerate growth

Bitwise, a data and analytics company with an onshore/offshore service delivery model, faced daunting competition from some of the largest technology firms in the world. Without a coherent and differentiated value proposition, the company’s growth had stalled.

The new Bitwise brand and content-centered marketing strategy are helping the company make inroads against the handful of global players who dominate the field. By emphasizing how they are different from — and better than — their larger rivals, rather than trying to prove that they’re “just as good,” Bitwise is connecting with IT decision makers, influencers and buyers who are themselves seeking a “different” approach to turning their data into a more valuable corporate asset.