2026-07-20

Top design agencies: How to re-understand a law firm | DHHT Law Firm interviews Dong Dao designers

The brand of a law firm stems from its accumulated professional capabilities, client trust, and organizational ethos, as well as the judgment and values of the institution within the industry.

On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, DHHT Law Firm launched a comprehensive revamp of its brand visual identity system (VI), and invited the design team that had worked on national-level projects such as the Beijing Winter Olympics and the G20 Hangzhou Summit to take on the overall design.

For the host, vision is never merely "design", but rather a system of expression that conveys the values and long-term direction of the institution.

During this brand renewal period, we had a conversation with Dongtou Brand Design Director Yao Shanshan. We discussed the core thoughts behind the rebranding of the DHHT Law Firm brand. We are sharing this here.

Dongtou has undertaken numerous national-level projects such as the Beijing Winter Olympics and the G20 Hangzhou Summit. It has also been serving various leading brands for a long time. Based on these cases, do you think a truly internationalized brand visual system that serves leading institutions typically possesses what core values? Are these values also applicable to professional institutions like law firms?

Yao Shanshan: When evaluating an excellent VI system, we usually consider it from three aspects.

The first aspect is "being visible". Whether it is on tall buildings, office buildings, or on our small badges, it must remain clearly visible and recognizable.

The second is "being remembered". People see us, but for it to become a memorable point and be spread, it needs to be engraved in their minds. Good logos are often extremely simplified, and even children can clearly describe what this shape looks like - this is the easiest to remember.

The third point is "uniformity without deformation". When applied at various touchpoints, it can maintain a high degree of uniformity and no details will be lost.

These values are equally applicable to professional institutions such as law firms. Because VI is like a set of high standards and strong sense of order. The legal industry and the legal profession themselves emphasize extreme rules and rigor. Therefore, having a rigorous and complete VI system helps to establish a trustworthy and reliable brand image.

When you first learned about the DHHT Law Firm project, what was your initial impression of this law firm? How do you understand the background and core considerations behind this VI upgrade initiative?

Yao Shanshan: From the first intuitive judgment, the original visual system of DHHT Law Firm is very professional, possessing the rationality and orderliness that are characteristic of the legal industry.

However, after further communication and understanding with the founder, we gradually realized that it actually carried more emotional content - especially the "temperature" aspect, which had not been fully conveyed in previous visual expressions. Therefore, at the cognitive level, there was a certain sense of dislocation.

This visual upgrade coincides with the 20th anniversary of the law firm's establishment, making it a very significant milestone. Building upon the previous visual expressions, we do indeed need a systematic calibration and update - using a clearer and more contemporary visual language to enable the outside world to see DHHT Law Firm again, remember DHHT Law Firm, and understand who we are and where we are headed in the future.

This was also a very important process of expressing oneself.

If you were to summarize the core logic of this new VI in one sentence, what would it be? During the specific design process, which key details did you and your team repeatedly deliberate on and eventually adjust?

Yao Shanshan:

The main focus is on establishing a visualizable system expression centered around "insight" and "peer".

In terms of the specific design, we do not start by creating "attractive visuals", but rather break down the law firm's working methods into two layers of logic: one is the professional judgment approach - how to quickly identify the key points in complex information; the other is the way of establishing a relationship with clients - not as a one-way output, but as a joint advancement.

Based on these two points, the visual system has made corresponding translations in three aspects.

In terms of information presentation, we have made a significant reduction overall, minimizing decorative elements and redundant structures, so that the layout can more directly serve the communication of information. Essentially, this is simulating the thinking path of lawyers who "strip away distractions and get straight to the core".

In the symbol system, we have abstracted the "D" symbol. It is no longer just a letter; instead, it is a "focusing device" - a structure similar to a viewfinder, used to enhance the sense of "insight", that is, to lock onto the key points from the complexity.

Furthermore, the handling of the two "H"s becomes a key element. Initially, we attempted to connect them to enhance the "sense of connection", but after repeated deliberations, we found that this approach was more likely to lead to the understanding of "close binding". Eventually, we chose to handle them separately and maintain a clear spatial relationship, using structural "parallelism" to express a more realistic peer relationship - independent yet with the same direction and rhythm.

At the level of style, we deliberately adjusted the original rational visual tendency, introduced more warm color expressions, and established a "relaxed sense within order" in the font and layout, so as not to weaken professionalism while making the communication relationship closer to a "side-by-side" state.

Overall, this system is not about "what a law firm is", but about "how a law firm operates".

From your experience, when a well-established visual system is implemented, what practical changes does it usually bring to the internal operations of a law firm?

Yao Shanshan: Many of the chain brands and large institutions we have served have the biggest headache - that each branch operates independently in different regions. VI is the tool that makes "all branches look the same". For law firms, if a client flies from Shanghai to an office in another region and the visual experience is completely different, they will feel that this is not the same law firm - the sense of trust will be undermined.

We conducted a follow-up visit. An employee from the company said, "Previously, I thought the company's logo and materials were very outdated and I was too embarrassed to post them on my Friends Circle. After the new VI was implemented, I voluntarily shared them myself." This kind of "internal recognition" is difficult to measure in terms of money. For law firms， excellent lawyers often also care a lot about the brand image of the platform they are on.

Many people understand VI as simply designing a logo. Regarding this project, how would you explain it: Why, for DHHT Law Firm, does this seem more like establishing a set of "brand expression tools" that can be used for a long time?

Yao Shanshan: The logo is certainly very important. The word "logo" originates from the root of the Greek language, and its meaning is "significance" - it represents what the core meaning of a brand is.

However, in legal terms, VI is equivalent to a "constitution". A constitution does not specify exactly how every sentence of every law should be phrased; instead, it sets out the fundamental principles that all laws must not violate. The same principle applies to VI - it stipulates how the logo should not be used, which colors we cannot use, what kind of layout is incorrect, and what basic principles we should follow.

Therefore, as long as the VI has strong execution and implementation capabilities, any employee of DHHT Law Firm who gets this manual can create a relatively unified and consistent brand image without external guidance. Even 5 years or 10 years later, its basic tone will remain the same.

Conclusion:

As an international design team that has long served national-level projects and leading institutions, Dong Dao has always maintained extremely high standards in its understanding of "branding". In their view, a truly mature visual system is not merely about designing a logo; rather, it is about helping an institution more accurately convey its own values, character and direction.

In this project, the host country once again discovered those previously unexpressed aspects of DHHT Law Firm's character - beyond professionalism and sharpness, there was also warmth, companionship, and long-termism.

So, Dong Dao drew a new navigation map for this ship, which had been sailing for twenty years.

It didn't change its direction; instead, it finally found a way of expression that was closer to its own nature.

The future is still a long way off. But at least from now on, people will be able to see more clearly why DHHT Law Firm can be trusted and why it has always moved forward steadfastly.