This post is part of a series discussing the process we’re undertaking to redesign our user interface and branding. We’re sharing in the spirit of “designing in the open” with the hope that it might be of value to our customers and others in our community.
Photo Credit: Daniel Sammut
Previously in this series, I outlined a number of preliminary steps we took to better understand our customers’ worlds in order to refresh the Saasu brand. One of the most prominent ways that a brand is communicated is through a visual identity1.
In my experience, a critical step in developing a visual identity is to have a really solid, well thought through design brief. We decided that we wanted to work with a visual design partner to translate the brand vision that had emerged from our user research and staff engagement sessions into a new visual identity system that we could apply to all aspects of our business. (I have written about the distinction between a logo and a visual identity system in a previous post.)
In the briefing, we outlined some core goals for the new brand:
- Better represent the vision, values and personality of Saasu and the people within it.
- Reflect longer-term design trends e.g. a shift towards more “structural” approach to visual design and multiple-resolution devices (and to avoid current design fads).
- Create an identity system that can be applied in a variety of contexts.
- Have a character that translates into new markets.
Being an online business, our emphasis was on creating a great online experience. But we wanted to ensure that the identity system also translated into other contexts (e.g. printed materials, conference stands, signage). Our brief also included:
- Our brand values
- The different ways that we expected to use the visual identity system to (e.g. our web application, marketing website, print materials, presentations etc.).
- An outline of our key audience groups, in more general terms (e.g. basic demographic information on our customer based based on usage statistics).
- A collection of prioritised personas outlining the people we aim to serve, based on our customer research and the many conversations we’ve had with customers over the years. These personas are a critical tool for helping the team to design empathically (I talked about this concept in my talk for the 2012 Saasu Conference).
- A “moodboard”, collaboratively developed with the Saasu team, outlining our thinking/perspective on the broad visual style and approach.
- Examples of other sites, applications, brands and other artefacts (e.g. architectural examples etc.) that reflected the aesthetic interests of the team.
- References to our peers in both the accounting software/online accounting market, but also examples we found inspiring from other markets.
- General notes on the design direction from our own experience and analysis of the other materials provided (For example, the importance of performance in relation to our web application and how this needed to be considered in the system).
- Our budget, timeline and key contacts.
Our aim was to provide enough information for our design collaborators to get up-to-speed with our market space, to understand our wants and needs and to set reasonable boundaries without being overly prescriptive. This latter point is very important (and a difficult balance to achieve); our experience shows that good design starts with the definition of clear boundaries, but tying things down too much or providing too much direction can limit creativity.
We then approached a number of design firms that we felt did inspiring work—some that we’d worked with before, some we knew by reputation, others that we discovered via Pinterest and Dribbble—and sought a response to brief. We were relieved to receive positive feedback about our brief from a number of the designers that we approached for this project; we feel the effort that we put in up front was reflected in the quality of the designers’ responses.
We were keen to engage a collaborative partner that complemented and extended our own skills and experience. After evaluating the responses to the brief (which was no easy task—did I mention we received a number of stand-out responses?), we decided to work with the team at Studio Sammut and have been really happy with the results to date. We hope you are too when we start rolling out these new visual identity elements in the coming months.
- There are a couple of different camps as to what “brand” means and who determines a brand’s meaning. I’m in the camp that a brand is the sum total of a person’s experience with an organisation—using the product and services, support, marketing and advertising communications, social channels etc. In this view, visual identity is just one part of this overall experience.
I enjoy reading all about your design philosophy and looking forward to your new style, but I am still awaiting some non MarComs communication with your UK MD about the UK version. We are using Brightpearl at the moment but as they do not have a full audit trail per warehouse & Location we need to move. We would like to speak to you.