VANCOUVER—Vancouver’s Fleming Creative Group has been renamed Switch United, with a comprehensive rebranding project to be completed by August. Partner and creative director Catherine Winckler says launching a new name without an accompanying brand identity is something she would never recommend to a client, but in this case it had to be done. “Yes, we’re doing it backwards,” she says. “We are our own worst client.”

Switch United specializes in experimental digital solutions like this sensory-driven digital wall, displayed during the Olympics

The name change was done early because the firm’s work for the Olympics generated some interest from international clients and the company didn’t want to pursue those opportunities under a name that was to be changed in the near future.

Switch United combines the firm’s three former divisions: Fleming Design focused on corporate work, Design for Real Estate did real estate marketing and Switch Interactive, which centred on experimental digital initiatives.

The change reflects the firm’s evolution, Winckler says. “Switch United brings together three divisions that had independently been very successful over the past few years, but we’re really now focused on entertainment and lifestyle related properties where you need multiple platforms.”

Winckler also wanted to shed the founder’s name, Doug Fleming, who retired last year and sold the firm to her and her co-partner Blair Pocock. The former name “didn’t necessarily apply to the new market,” she says, but the founder still has a close relationship with the firm.

The new name preserves the brand capital of “the strongest of the divisions,” she says, because the former Switch Interactive division had developed an international reputation.

The firm will focus on digitally-led multi-platform, and often experimental, solutions, a category that the 17-person staff is passionate about. “We’re always experimenting with things that can drive design forward,” Winckler says. During the Olympics the firm designed a 110-foot long sensory-driven digital wall at the 2010 Commerce Centre, which showcased western Canadian economic development.

The new name launched on April 1, after Winckler learned that Apple was established on the same day in 1976. “That story worked out well,” she says.

Preliminary work has begun on the firm’s new brand identity, Winckler says. Switch has just hired a new senior art director to lead the project, and the ups and downs of the rebranding process are going to be chronicled in an online diary.

As for Switch’s current branding, right now its website and business collateral feature a temporary, generic wordmark. “It’s as clean as can be. It’s so not us,” Winckler says. “Anyone who knows us knows something’s coming.”

Contact: Switch United