Elizabeth Goodspeed on untangling credit in design

In 2020, New York-based design studio Creech led a rebrand for Athletic Greens, a $99-a-month green powder endorsed by everyone from pop neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman to retired US Olympian Allyson Felix. This was technically the company’s second major overhaul: its original 2010 packaging – marked by typographic eclecticism reminiscent of a Dr. Bronner’s bottle and a runner’s silhouette – was already updated in 2018 to feature a circle of leaves and a generic mid-2010s geometric sans logo. Creech’s rebrand was, in a word, radical. It introduced a new name (AG1), brand language, and a complete overhaul of packaging, print materials, and advertising – all designed to position Athletic Greens as the zenith of wellness and high design. When the work went live in 2021, it marked a striking departure from the brand’s earlier iterations. The results spoke for themselves: by 2022, AG1 made headlines for raising $115 million in funding, pushing its valuation to a staggering $1.2 billion.

Creech continued to collaborate with AG1, creating a TV campaign for the brand in 2023 that reinforced their premium positioning and further cemented its identity. But in September 2024, SF- and LA-based design and marketing agency The New Company announced that it had further developed the AG1 identity. The colour palette was expanded beyond AG1’s signature green to include red for emphasis and blue for calm and optimism – though even the green itself was altered, the result of, as The New Company’s executive creative director Matt Luckhurst describes it, “walking through a million different samples and Pantone colours to see how the green would look at every touchpoint”. The typefaces shifted from Lausanne and Times Now to Items by Schick Toikka and Diatype by Dinamo (both billed as better, modernised revisions of the former), and the logo too was subtly refined, with its rounded edges removed and the letterforms subtly tweaked. These shifts were understated, but “once you add all these small changes up, they become fairly large,” creative director Steven Olimpio explains. And there’s truth to that: the cumulative effect of these tweaks is more impactful than any single adjustment might suggest. The system feels bigger and more active – especially when it comes to the new animated elements and auxiliary diagrammatic language that The New Company introduced. The fact remains, however, that the new AG1 still looks a lot like what Creech introduced in 2021.

I’ll be the first to admit that I love some good old fashioned Graphic Design drama. And there’s definitely some of that here: in The New Company’s Instagram post showcasing their AG1 work, the studio initially described it as a “rebrand” (a characterisation they later revised to “brand identity evolution and guidelines”), and credited Creech only for “brand language”. I don’t think The New Company had any ill intentions – in fact, it’s practically industry standard not to credit whoever worked on something before you (unless they’re famous enough to add cachet of course, as with a rebrand like L’eggs). But what might seem like gossip over semantics actually speaks to a larger question: who gets to own a brand’s story when multiple studios contribute to its evolution? In an industry where clout is currency, being credited for a ‘rebrand’ can carry far more weight than being seen as the caretaker of someone else’s work. The New Company’s updates – refining colours, typography, motion, and internal systems – are integral to how AG1 functions today, but they’re undeniably built on a system Creech fundamentally reimagined. As Griffin Creech, founder of Creech, puts it: “How do you tease apart the work someone did from the work that directly influenced it?”

The perception of what constitutes a rebrand, in contrast to a “refresh” or an “evolution,” often has less to do with the scale of the changes made than with which specific components are altered. For some brands, a single element does so much heavy lifting that it essentially anchors the identity: what would Chanel be without its interlaced C’s, or Chobani without its round, friendly typeface? What about Burberry without plaid, or Casper without its playful illustration style? When I was at RISD, my (universally beloved – iykyk) graphic design professor Doug Scott used the term “fifth element” to describe these ineffable things that make a brand feel like itself – the sum greater than the whole of its parts. A seemingly small adjustment can have an outsized impact if it touches one of these heavily weighted “fifth elements,” while broader changes to more peripheral aspects – like introducing subtle textures or updating internal brand guidelines – might feel like a refresh, barely perceptible to consumers. What makes Arial different from Helvetica? Nothing to some people, and everything to others. (Then again, there’s a reason typefaces are licensed and not copyrighted; the law has determined they are too similar to be meaningfully distinguished.) Even minor tweaks to a critical component can radically reshape how a brand is perceived – at least to other graphic designers.

The line between before and after has certainly become murkier as brands try to hold onto equity in a world that never stops changing. Thanks to new channels, faster-moving trends, and constant business pivots, companies are refreshing their identities more frequently. But while they’re changing more often, they’re changing less when they do. Studios like The New Company have embraced this less-is-more mindset, focusing on thoughtful adjustments rather than feeling the need to start from scratch. Brooklyn-based studio Porto Rocha’s evolution of Twitch, released in summer 2024, took a similar approach; its work on the streaming platform’s identity, originally designed by Collins in 2019, left much of the system intact, including Twitch’s wordmark, typeface, mascot, and signature purple. Instead, Porto Rocha optimised the toolkit with a simplified typographic system and introduced hyper-digital elements like 3D graphics to reflect how Twitch’s business model and audience had shifted in just five years. (nb: Collins is not credited in Porto Rocha’s case study, nor does Collins credit the original designer of the Twitch logo, made in 2012, in its own case study.)

Porto Rocha’s rebrand of Robinhood, another brand originally designed by Collins, was a bit more radical. Collins’ playful, illustration-forward branding for Robinhood had been a standout success when it launched in 2020, but over time the identity became both a liability and a victim of its own influence. “So many brands kind of hijacked that illustration style,” Leo Porto reflects, “and suddenly it was no longer associated with just Robinhood and its values.” Compounding this was the growing complexity of Robinhood’s offerings, which had expanded from a simple product into multiple verticals like cryptocurrency and advanced trading aimed at more seasoned investors. The original identity, while effective for attracting first-time users, struggled to maintain coherence across these new initiatives and with more mature audiences. As Felipe Rocha notes: “With more people involved, more agencies involved, and more verticals, it became hard to keep the style consistent – it was too complex to implement.” While some might view Porto Rocha’s repeated rebranding of Collins work as targeted poaching, Leo who worked at Collins from 2015 to 2019 before founding Porto Rocha, clarifies that he didn’t even work on Robinhood during his time at Collins (nor did he even work on the project at Porto Rocha – it was led by partner Felipe). “I don’t think Robinhood even knew I had been at Collins when we pitched for the RFP.” Still, Leo’s experience at Collins likely made Porto Rocha an appealing choice for evolving the identity – it gave them unique insight into how Collins had built the first phase of Robinhood and how to effectively build on it. This is a familiar pattern in design, where methodologies, aesthetics, and philosophies developed in one studio travel with designers as they transition between studios, ultimately creating a shared lineage (see also: Massimo Vignelli’s bold, grid-driven approach and minimalist type choices, which shaped Michael Bierut’s work at Pentagram and were later carried forward by Bierut’s former employees in their own studio, Order).

In a recent Instagram post, Creech expressed pride in its “sweeping and category-shifting rebrand” for AG1, describing it as a foundation for an identity system “that can stand the test of time, even as it continues to evolve past our involvement”. Clap-back or not, this idea, that a good brand needs to evolve, is a sound one. A well-designed brand doesn’t (or shouldn’t) need constant reinvention; it should be able to grow and adapt to meet potential shifts without losing its footing. A brand system built to solve only for today risks becoming irrelevant tomorrow. A strong identity doesn’t just offer rules for consistency; it also provides a kind of time capsule – seeds of ideas that anticipate where the brand might need to go. In fact, Matt Luckhurst, executive creative director at The New Company, notes that the studio’s guidelines for Athletic Greens (like most of the guidelines for the brands they work on) include just that: examples of the system pushed to its extremes, “ideas that aren’t meant to be used yet but show where the brand could go down the road”.

This adaptability is at the heart of what makes branding unique. Designing a poster or an album cover results in a singular, static output, even if it was the result of many hands. A branding project, on the other hand, often results in something more fluid: a codified set of rules and assets that shape future design work. As Leo Porto of Porto Rocha describes it, “we don’t think of ourselves as the protagonist of the work anymore. We’re not signing our posters.” Packaging, print materials, and art direction may have tangible outputs, but the brand itself is a living system, not a finished object. “The work we do is so different now,” Leo says. “It’s so large and complex, and there’s so many systems that are meant to be used and interpreted and tweaked with or played with by others. It’s not precious.”

It logically follows that a studio’s case study rarely captures the full scope of a brand system; instead, it offers a curated glimpse, showing intent without revealing the “special sauce” of what makes the system tick, and where it might go in years to come. As Steven Olimpio of The New Company explains, “you have to pick a place in time for the case study,” balancing what can be shown publicly with the proprietary elements – internal guidelines, operational systems, and long-term strategies – that remain hidden but are critical to a brand’s future success. By design, case studies are more like snapshots that focus on the polished outputs, leaving the scaffolding that supports ongoing growth deliberately out of view. Most brands don’t stay frozen in that idealised form for long – if they ever truly existed in that form to begin with. This fluidity can make it difficult to pin down where one studio’s work ends and another begins.

For a studio like Creech, whose high-profile work on Athletic Greens helped the brand skyrocket in visibility and value, public acknowledgment is more about survival than ego. Smaller studios, which often rely on word-of-mouth to secure future work, are disproportionately affected when their contributions are downplayed or overlooked. “You generally know who you took over for,” Griffin Creech notes, “so just be accurate about it, because you are potentially affecting how another studio showcases the work they very much did.” By contrast, larger agencies often have the budget for resources like dedicated PR teams, polished case studies, and a robust online presence to shape the narrative around their involvement, even when their role is iterative. This disparity reinforces an imbalance of visibility: smaller studios often define a brand’s identity at its earliest stages, laying the foundation for its future evolution. However, it’s usually when a brand gains momentum – earning public attention and achieving greater success – that larger agencies are brought in for refinements. These agencies often get more credit because their involvement coincides with the brand’s peak visibility, overshadowing the foundational work of the smaller studios. “It used to be enough to just make good work,” Griffin said, “but what I think you’re seeing shift is that there are more publications and people covering the industry online, which means you need to make sure that you promote the heck out of everything, pretty much forever.”

This growing emphasis on press and publicity doesn’t just affect individual studios; it shapes how rebrands themselves are positioned within the industry, amplifying the credit imbalance between smaller and larger agencies. Even as companies look to smaller, piecemeal changes, they want those changes to signal bigger impact; rebrands have become status symbols as much as they are visual updates. Hiring a studio like Pentagram or Collins becomes a declaration of financial strength and prestige – clients know that these names alone can elevate their brand’s profile. This choice of agency is strategic, signalling that they can afford to work with “the best,” regardless of stylistic fit. Increasingly, even incremental tweaks are labelled as “rebrands” to grab media attention; what might have once been an internal update is now repackaged as a full-scale transformation, leveraging the PR cachet of the term. If a company hires a design studio and no one hears about it, did it even happen? For designers, this adds pressure to craft designs that are not just functional but also newsworthy – as well as the temptation to perhaps emphasise their own involvement over the involvement of others at every opportunity. Griffin Creech, however, sees a clear distinction between what he considers a rebrand and these unduly inflated smaller updates. “For us, a rebrand starts with positioning. If it doesn’t begin with some rethinking – like a tagline or big idea – it feels like a design evolution, not a true rebrand,” he explains. “If you look at the before and after of AG1 in 2020 and where it was in 2021, I’d say that’s the definition of a rebrand.”

Credit or not, the rebrand cycle rolls on. When Collins’ most recent rebrand for Bose launched, I spotted a salient tweet from designer PJ Scowden at Missouri based studio All True: “Great Work! I can’t wait to see what Porto Rocha does with it!” When I mentioned this to Porto Rocha, they laughed. “Ultimately you don’t have much control over how your work is perceived. The only thing you can do is put out more work.” In a field built on evolution, the only real credit comes from whatever you do next.