If someone remembers your website because it looks like a competitor’s, which business have you helped them remember?
The BBC’s report on Adidas’s lawsuit against White Fox brings that question into focus. Adidas alleges that the Australian retailer’s four-striped clothing designs are deceptively similar to its three-stripe trademark. It also argues that advertising featuring genuine Adidas items alongside White Fox products could suggest an association between the brands.
Those are Adidas’s allegations, not findings by the court. The report describes an unresolved dispute, and both companies’ law firms declined to comment. I am not trying to decide the legal outcome. What interests me as a design agency owner is how much recognition can sit inside a seemingly simple visual detail.
Three stripes are not an explanation of a product. Yet they can carry an association with a particular business before anyone reads a name. That recognition is valuable. It is also a useful reminder that a brand’s identity extends well beyond its logo.
Your logo is only part of what people recognise.
Colour, typography, photography, packaging and recurring graphic elements can all contribute to how people identify a business. Their value comes from being used together, consistently enough for customers to start making the connection.
A local bakery might become familiar through its shopfront, its bags and the way it photographs its products. A specialist manufacturer might develop a recognisable approach to diagrams, brochures and product pages. Neither needs the scale of Adidas to benefit from customers connecting those details with its name.
That is why I would not judge an identity only by whether the logo looks good on a presentation slide. I want to know whether the business can use it across the places customers actually encounter it, and whether those encounters feel connected.
If the website, sales material and social posts could each belong to a different company, the design is asking customers to do the work of joining them up.
Looking familiar is not the same as becoming familiar.
It is understandable to look at a successful competitor and think: that is the standard we need to reach. A well-designed reference can help a business articulate its ambitions, particularly when it does not yet have the language to describe them.
The problem comes when a reference starts making the decisions. The same palette. Similar type. Comparable photography. A version of the same headline.
You may end up with something polished, but the resemblance does little to explain why a customer should choose you. It can make the business feel like a substitute rather than a choice in its own right.
For small and medium-sized companies, that matters because design time and marketing budgets are limited. I would want that investment to build associations with your expertise, your offer and your name, rather than depend on recognition another business has already established.
Research the competition without turning it into a template.
Competitor research should help us understand what customers are being offered, what claims have become interchangeable and which needs are not being addressed clearly.
Imagine several local building companies using almost identical photographs of finished kitchens and describing themselves as reliable, experienced and professional. Those qualities matter, but the presentation gives a prospective customer very little to compare.
A business that specialises in difficult renovations might have a more useful story to tell: how it approaches constraints, communicates decisions and manages work in an occupied home. Showing that process could shape its messaging, photography and website in a way that is both distinctive and relevant.
The opportunity is not necessarily to choose the colour nobody else uses. It is to make something important about the business easier to recognise.
That gives the creative work a stronger starting point than “make ours look like theirs, but different”.
Keep the useful conventions. Develop your own expression.
There is a balance here. Being distinctive does not mean abandoning everything customers understand.
A website still needs clear navigation. A product page should make the details easy to find. A service business should explain what it does, who it helps and how to start a conversation.
Those conventions support understanding. We do not need to make an enquiry form confusing to prove that a brand is original.
The identity can do the more individual work: the tone of the writing, the way expertise is demonstrated, the imagery and the graphic system. Good design brings those things together without putting obstacles between the customer and their task.
This connects with the question I explored in my Insight on Jaguar and disruptive branding. Difference needs a purpose. Here, that purpose is helping people recognise and remember the business they are actually dealing with.
Before a redesign, ask what should become recognisably yours.
I would begin with a few practical questions:
- What do customers already recognise and value about the business?
- What makes your offer meaningfully different from the alternatives?
- Which parts of your current design communicate that difference, and which could belong to anyone?
- Can the proposed identity work consistently across your website, print and marketing?
- Are the references informing the direction, or are they becoming the direction?
These are design and positioning questions, not a substitute for trademark advice. A commercial review of an identity does not establish whether it is legally safe to use. Where protection or potential conflicts need assessing, that is a separate conversation with an appropriate specialist.
Through Treefrog, I help businesses connect brand strategy with identity, websites and the material they use to reach customers. The aim is to create a coherent expression of the company, rather than a collection of attractive pieces that could represent anybody.
For me, the useful question raised by this dispute is not how many visual details you need to change. It is whether your design is giving people a clearer picture of your business.
A good reference helps you understand what is possible. A good identity helps customers recognise what is yours.
If your brand or website no longer reflects what makes your business worth choosing, see how I can help or get in touch.