CASE STUDY
ShyftLabs Brand Identity
As ShyftLabs transitioned out of their early start up phase they reached out to me to create a scalable brand identity system to support their new website and future marketing/sales efforts.
This project focused on expanding ShyftLabs’ visual storytelling vocabulary, and creating consistency across their website, sales decks and social presence by developing a set of detailed brand guidelines/asset libraries.
Problem & Objectives
Existing ShyftLabs creative prior to rebrand
ShyftLab’s existing website was designed in the very early stages of their brand’s journey. It was a single page architecture with no documented design system.
The existing site relied on a few basic shapes, 3 analogous colors, a generic font stack, and leveraged small product screenshots that were difficult to visually parse. Additionally, their existing web presence was on a dated hard coded site architecture that was difficult and time consuming to update.
Our primary objective was to create a comprehensive set of brand guidelines and supporting asset library that designers and agency creative teams could use for their marketing efforts. Our secondary objective was to shift the site to fully featured architecture that would be easy to scale and grow.
Process & Strategy
Under the direction of Shyftlabs CTO and CEO, paired with an in house project copywriter, a senior designer, and a web developer we performed an audit of the existing brand, and enumerated future use cases where the new system would need to be leveraged.
After careful consideration we identified Webflow as the site architecture/CMS of choice. Due to time constraints dictated by their existing roadmap, we began building out the site architecture and new visual design system in tandem with the brand guidelines and asset & template library.
We zeroed in on 9 system pillars and began our work: Brand Strategy, Voice and Tone, Logo Usage, Color Pallet, Typography, Graphic Shapes and Collages, Product Imagery, Iconography, and Photography.
ShyftLabs: “Revolutionizing Enterprises with Smart Data Solutions”
Execution
After careful consideration and testing Mozaic GEO Variable was chose as the brand marketing and web font. A bold modern sans serif that could be self hosted in their Webflow instance.
The existing analogous color pallet was expanded to 5 desaturated shades of blue for primary color usage and 6 new secondary colors were added.
Playing off the geometric hexagonal nature of the existing logo simple graphic shapes and patterns were created to add visual interest and balance compositions.
An abstract collage style was created for hero imagery consisting of colorized 3d renders and flat abstract geometric shapes. This style sped up production time while allowing us to convey abstract concepts regarding data extraction and analysis.
Because each solution ShyftLabs builds is custom to their respective clients, a simplified approach to product imagery solved two problems. Keeping the exact details of existing client implementations confidential while using the minimal amount of information need to communicate the products function, ensuring legibility at small sizes.
Working with their in house photographer I created a set of neutral photographic composition, lighting and post production guidelines. We planned a day of image capture at one of their large in person events showcasing their team and facilities in Ontario, Canada. Due to the remote nature of the team and time constraints it was imperative that the in house imagery could be seamlessly blended with curated stock for future projects.
A set of simple flat style duotone icons were developed which were leveraged in the site redesign as well as sales/pitch decks.
Outcome
The final output of the project was a new multi page site architecture and visual design system, brand guidelines documentation, asset libraries, and deck templates.
RESULTS
