In a way, the world has caught up with Citrix.
As the company’s CEO, David Henshall, writes, “Thirty years ago, Citrix pioneered a radical idea: that office work didn’t have to be constrained to the office. That with the right technology, people could work from anywhere.”
Thanks to COVID-19, the world of the physical office now seems a world away, so the timing was perhaps ideal for the company’s next evolution. Today Citrix rolled out its first significant logo change in 30 years, alongside the new ecosystem that will carry it into the future.
Athletics and Invencion joined forces to “modernize and humanize” the brand. As they write, “More than just a rebrand or a new logo, this has been a strategic process designed to transform the brand and position Citrix as an employee experience partner to its customers. The new logotype and brand identity system [are] a bold signal of this focus.”
The old Citrix logo was memorable for its upside-down ‘i’—but in the new mark, the ‘i’ is righted, and the dot has been moved to the ‘x,’ anthropomorphizing the letter into a human figure to signify the brand’s emphasis on the employee.
For the first time in Citrix’s history, the identity now also incorporates motion and sound, “with space being used as a key design element within the overall brand identity system.”
True to the collaborative nature of the Citrix platform, the development of the new tools involved several key partners, including Matt Blease (illustration), CATK (custom 3D graphics), Simon Pyke (sonic/audio), and Buck (brand film). Huge, meanwhile, utilized the brand identity and strategy in their global “You’re Made for Bigger Things” campaign.
As Henshell concludes in his letter introducing the changes, “Transforming our brand has been a thoughtful process over many months—starting with accelerating our shift to a cloud subscription model to launching the industry’s first intelligent workspace. The shifts caused by COVID-19 have accelerated trends we were already focused on—especially when it comes to the role of technology in employee experience. It’s highlighted the need to give people the mental and emotional space to do their best work.”
Check out the sum toll of the team’s efforts below, designed to help Citrix do just that.
