LogoLounge 2

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Job no:82185(CTP) Title : RP-Logolounge 2 Client : Pro-vision

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175 Size : 228.6(w)279.4(h)mm Co : M6 C0 O/P: CTP

Dept : DTP D/O : 27.08.04 (Job no:000000 D/O : 00.00.01 Co: CM0)

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For twenty years, WRQ had one core product, which treated the

privately owned company well throughout those years. But the

900-plus-employee firm had to do a self-evaluation on the advent

of its two-decade anniversary. Purchases of its single product—

a software program called Reflection that allowed PCs to con-

nect to mainframe computers to retrieve information—were in

steep decline, due to the fact that not many people purchased

mainframes anymore, and most who did were already satisfied

Reflection customers.

WRQ had to find a way to leverage its technology and expertise

to open up new opportunities. Eventually, the company pur-

chased a firm in the Netherlands that had a complementary prod-

uct—software that would eventually be marketed under the name

WRQ Verastream. It provided a critical link to an emerging soft-

ware market called Enterprise Application Integration, which

allows disparate and proprietary mission-critical systems to be

connected to one another—an important ability when companies

find that the new inventory management system can’t share use-

ful data with its e-commerce application, for example.

It was a time of dramatic transition for WRQ. It moved into a new

product space, and a new culture was moving in—literally. There

was new leadership and a new product, as well as a rash of lay-

offs due to the technology bubble beginning to burst. If WRQ was

going to thrive, management realized it needed a new approach

to how it managed its corporate identity and a strategy for how it

spoke about its products.

The company’s old logo, a triangle built from bars representing

earth, air, and water—all representative and appropriate to its Seat-

tle home—had little as it pushed further into the global marketplace.

WRQ

Identity Redesign

Factor Design, San Francisco, California

Jeff Zwerner, partner and creative director of Factor Design, a

design firm with offices in San Francisco and Hamburg, Germany,

says his firm was called in to develop a symbol that embodied the

new business strategy related to its transition toward Enterprise

Application Integration—of companies, of employees, of manage-

ment, of product, and of technology. It was an interesting chal-

lenge, he notes, because although Factor Design is known for its

high-touch, emotional work, WRQ is a company that deals with the

intangible and often impersonal world of technology and software.

Factor’s solution was pure: two interconnecting forms that could be

used alongside the WRQ name, the two product names, or any

future product names to strongly connect the corporate source

brand with the sibling product brand. Through use of color, separate

products could be distinguished. Even better, the secondary design

language could be taken apart and extrapolated into myriad design

applications, furthering the brand’s visual identity through artistry.

“The identity was designed to be flexible,” Zwerner says. “The

shapes can be used independently, as a supporting system.

When we presented the program to WRQ, we also presented how

the design language could evolve over the next ten years without

altering or adding to the core palette of colors or design language.

It is simply a matter of dialing up the use of certain elements and

dialing down others to place the emphasis on pertinent parts of

the WRQ story.”

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