Zyloware-Kenmark Rebrand
2025 · Zyloware Eyewear · Port Chester, NY
In 2025, Zyloware (a company with over 100 years of history in the optical industry) acquired Kenmark Eyewear, significantly expanding its portfolio of brands and its presence in the market. The acquisition created an immediate and complex creative challenge: how do you bring two established companies together under a unified visual identity without erasing the equity either brand had built?
The Challenge
Lead a full corporate rebrand for two companies with deep brand histories on both sides, multiple licensed celebrity and fashion eyewear lines, a broad retail partner network, and both consumer-facing and trade-facing communication needs. The rebrand has to work across every touchpoint, from trade show environments and retail point-of-sale to social media, email marketing, product packaging, and corporate communications, while signaling growth and modernity without alienating existing partners and customers.
Responsibilites
As Creative Director, leading every dimension of the rebrand from initial strategy through execution. Responsibilities include developing the unified visual identity system and brand architecture, establishing how legacy Zyloware and Kenmark brand equities are honored and integrated, and directing the rollout of new brand standards. The work includes logo and identity development, color and typography systems, template design for print and digital applications, trade show and environmental graphics, and cross-team coordination to ensure consistent implementation across departments.
What Was Created
A complete unified identity system for the merged company, including brand architecture, logo and mark development, full standards documentation, and a phased rollout across all existing and new touchpoints.
Concepts
Zyloware carried over a century of history and a deep, trusted identity within the optical trade. Kenmark brought its own established relationships and brand architecture. The challenge was not to simply pick one and discard the other, or to split the difference into something generic, but to find a direction that honored the strength of both while creating something new enough to signal genuine transformation. The conceptualization phase involved extensive exploration of naming strategy, logo directions, color system possibilities, and typographic approaches, each evaluated against the practical demands of our company.
Guidelines
A rebrand at this scale isn't complete when the logo is finalized, it's complete when every person in the organization knows exactly how to use it. A core deliverable of the Zyloware-Kenmark rebrand was the development of a comprehensive brand guidelines document covering every dimension of the new unified identity. The guidelines establish the rules and rationale behind the visual system: logo usage and clear space requirements, primary and secondary color palette specifications with print and digital color values, typography hierarchy and approved font pairings, photography and art direction standards, iconography and graphic element usage, and tone of voice guidance for written communications.
Leadership
My promotion to Creative Director at Zyloware was the direct result of my track record: a recognition that the creative vision, strategic thinking, and leadership capability required to guide a company through its most significant visual transformation in a century were already present and proven. Growing from Creative Manager to Senior Creative Manager to Creative Director over the course of four years, through the centennial campaign, the National Eyewear Day programs, the Vision Expos, and the ongoing management of multiple licensed brands, built exactly the foundation that a rebrand of this complexity demands. Leading as Creative Director means owning not just the design decisions but the organizational ones: setting the creative strategy, managing timelines and vendor relationships, aligning stakeholders across departments, and making the final call on visual decisions that go out under the Zyloware-Kenmark name.
Progress
A corporate rebrand of this scale doesn't happen overnight, it happens in phases, each one building on the last, each one requiring the kind of sustained creative leadership that keeps a complex program moving forward without losing coherence or momentum. Within the first year of the Zyloware-Kenmark rebrand, significant ground has been covered. The unified visual identity system has been developed and approved, establishing the new brand architecture that governs how the merged company presents itself. Brand guidelines have been completed and distributed, the new identity has begun rolling out. Trade show materials have been updated to reflect the new direction, ensuring that the brand's most visible industry-facing moments are leading with the new identity. The rebrand is a living program, not a single deliverable and the progress made in the first year represents the hardest part: establishing the foundation that everything else is built on.
The Better Together Promise
Two American legacy companies, each with their own identity, history, and relationship with the eyecare community, needed a unifying message that could speak simultaneously to internal teams navigating a major transition and to the eyecare professionals whose trust both companies had spent decades earning. The Better Together Promise was the answer to that challenge, a brand manifesto and messaging system developed to articulate the values, commitments, and shared vision of the merged company, launched alongside the visual rebrand at bettertogetherpromise.com.
Outcome
Currently in progress. This project represents the highest level of creative leadership in my portfolio, a full corporate rebrand for a century-old company at a defining moment in its history, owned end-to-end by a small creative team, led by me as Creative Director.