Recently, we proudly launched a refreshed brand for HTEC — a bold redesign that captures our growth, vision, and ambition. 

Like the companies they represent, brands are not static. They must adapt and evolve with changing priorities, emerging opportunities, and new insights. 

Since announcing the refresh, we deliberately absorbed internal and external feedback, observed our brand in the wild, and reflected on how to make it stronger and even more authentic.  

The result is a subtle yet impactful realignment — Brand 2.0.  

This is not a reinvention but a deliberate refinement — an effort to hone and elevate what already exists, ensuring our brand mirrors the dynamic and innovative essence of HTEC with even greater clarity and purpose. 

Driving forces behind Brand 2.0 

A brand evolves only through continuous observation, learning, and refinement. With over 2,500 HTEC team members, we quickly recognized that the voices of people actively using the brand to express ideas, connect with others, and build relationships needed to be heard. Their insight helped clarify aspects of our company’s identity that are crucial to both external consistency and internal growth and efficiency. 

In addition to implementing direct and indirect team feedback to make the brand more authentic and relatable, we had the following goals for Brand 2.0 — modernize our design language and create a scalable design system to give the brand more intentionality and adaptability across HTEC initiatives.  

Brand 2.0 strikes a unique balance, creating a seamless connection between our people, initiatives, and clients, ensuring that every interaction feels like a part of the same shared journey. 

What’s new in Brand 2.0?

While the changes we introduced might seem minimal at first glance, they were carefully considered and crafted to advance the way the brand will function across HTEC’s broad needs. Consider Brand 2.0 a thoughtful evolution instead of a dramatic reinvention. 

 “HTEC Group” is simply “HTEC” 

Less is more.  

Perhaps the most visible update is the removal of “Group” from the HTEC name and logo. This reflects a more streamlined identity, unified company vision, and simplified introduction. The move underlines the maturity of HTEC as a company, while at our core, we remain the same beloved brand. HTEC Group Inc. is still our official name, but streamlining our external branding offers more agility and approachability. 

Updated color palette 

The next update was to our primary color palette. Although the old palette served us well, the update features subtle enhancements to improve clarity, ensure consistency, and add vibrancy across all touchpoints. The adjustments were made with accessibility in mind, supporting consistent application across digital and physical platforms and reinforcing the visual cohesion of our brand. 

Our new primary color palette features a cool shade of mint that serves as an accent color, while the updated secondary color palette does wonders in highlighting, creating accents, and showing mood in our storytelling. These colors are designed to work seamlessly with other shades of the same hue, creating a pleasant and harmonious aesthetic. 

Website refresh: HTEC.com 

Our website is one of the most crucial touchpoints for clients and prospective employees, so refreshing its design and layout was a primary focus of Brand 2.0.  

The new design’s intuitive structure guarantees smoother site navigation and an improved user experience. The refreshed layout focuses on clarity and storytelling, showcasing HTEC’s innovative engineering approach and expertise across industries.

We’ve tackled various aspects of our site to enhance its visual appeal. Additionally, we used this opportunity to expand and refine our industry and service category pages and add microsites for Careers & Culture, Alliances, and more.   

Dive in and explore the new site @ https://htec.com.

New Digital Asset Management platform 

With the launch of Brand 2.0, we also implemented a new digital asset management platform that makes it easier for our teams to access and use brand assets. 

This platform centralizes all brand materials, such as logos, templates, decks, videos, and imagery, into one location, ensuring everyone has the right tools at their fingertips. 

By streamlining workflows, the platform supports collaboration and empowers teams to create, share, and apply assets effortlessly, guaranteeing HTEC’s brand is consistently represented across all touchpoints. 

Introducing HTEC’s sonic logo 

Sound has the power to amplify emotion and strengthen recognition; consequently, we are proud to introduce the HTEC sonic logo and audio suite as part of Brand 2.0.  

Our new sonic logo is an audio identity crafted to create a distinctive and memorable connection with our audiences. The accompanying custom audio suite provides several background audio tracks that can be applied to consistently express the brand sonically. 

When used for videos, events, or other external touchpoints, the sonic logo ensures our brand’s sound resonates as strongly as its visual identity, adding a cohesive auditory dimension to our storytelling. 

The design process behind the brand refresh 

Refreshing the HTEC brand started with collaboration and exploration. We began with workshops and interviews to gather in-depth insights on how various departments and teams applied the brand. These sessions served as our North Star, revealing invaluable insights and pain points from people who worked with the brand daily. By combining primary research, feedback, and experimentation, we developed a well-defined plan to create a more cohesive and functional brand experience. 

The design team approached this update with care and intention, focusing on continuity while identifying key areas for improvement. Rather than reinventing the wheel, the goal was to refine and elevate what already worked, ensuring the brand continued to reflect HTEC’s core vision and values. 

The result is a design language that feels natural, authentic, and flexible enough to meet diverse needs — from empowering our internal teams to creating meaningful connections through external communication. We wanted to ensure the brand would look good and work effortlessly for everyone who interacts with it. 

Key takeaways from the design process 

1. Workshops are not just about feedback—they’re about building buy-in 

Facilitating cross-unit workshops helped our team gather insights while serving a strategic purpose — involving teams early to ensure the refresh reflected their realities. These sessions uncovered nuances we might have missed, transforming what could have been a top-down initiative into a truly collaborative effort. 

2. Pain points lie in the details 

The process taught us that brand redesign challenges aren’t always obvious. Most teams focus on changing logos and color palettes but miss deeper issues like misaligned presentation templates, hard-to-find resources, and unclear guidelines that create real-world friction for teams. Addressing these seemingly small details had a far greater impact than we expected. 

3. Consistency, not uniformity, is key to brand coherence 

We realized that while every touchpoint needs to feel like a part of the same family, they don’t actually have to look identical. The refresh focused on developing a design language that could be applied fluidly across various HTEC channels and initiatives while remaining unmistakably HTEC. 

4. Continued involvement is key for stakeholder engagement 

Our feedback loop with HTEC teams didn’t end after the workshops. Instead, we kept key stakeholders involved as we developed concepts and tested solutions, ensuring the final output felt relevant and actionable. Co-creation won the day. 

5. A brand refresh is an operational exercise, not just a creative one 

This process revealed an unshakable truth: a brand isn’t just a creative endeavor; it’s an operational one. Refining tools, workflows, and resources to make the brand easier to implement was just as crucial as the visual adjustments. The refresh needed to serve the people using it, not just look good. 

6. Designers are facilitators, not only executors 

This process required designers to move beyond creating visuals and take on the role of collaborative facilitators. By leading workshops, gathering and synthesizing feedback, and guiding discussions around pain points and solutions, the design team ensured the refreshed brand met the needs of both internal and external stakeholders. In doing so, our team elevated design from an executional task to a strategic function. 

A look into the future 

Next, our team will focus on operationalizing Brand 2.0, inserting the design language into our daily workflows, and making sure every team has the ability and resources to apply the refreshed designs and layouts with minimal friction. Our goal is to create a design system that is visually coherent and accessible because a brand that doesn’t work for its people will not work for its audience. 

The challenge ahead is one of precision and adaptation. The brand must be flexible enough to leave room for new opportunities and initiatives while maintaining the consistency and clarity that define it. Our team is continually refining the interplay between form and function — anticipating where the brand will go, not just reacting to where it’s been.