Process

We call our process the Funnel.

Identity development is done from a general understanding of the essence of a company or a product to details and visual solutions. The visual identity process usually has seven stages, at the end of each of which there is synchronization with the client. Our work process is inclusive and requires the involvement of the client's team. Unlike most industry agencies, we do not disappear for several weeks to return with unexpected results because there is no guarantee that it will be a pleasant or unpleasant surprise for the client. We try to make it as transparent as possible for the client about what we do at each stage, why we do it, and how the decisions will affect the following steps and the result.

There are three basic principles of our approach:

• Keep it inclusive. We consider ourselves as a part of a client's team, so we work as a team.
• Keep it practical. It should be clear how each action during the process informs the next step and the practical value.
• From general to specific. Start with understanding, end with execution.

The success of the project starts before the actual work does. So before we start, we would like to understand the formal request from your team and real business and personal goals. We need to discuss restrictions, expectations, decision-making process in detail. We must ensure we are on the same page and understand each other.

It's also essential to do a risk assessment. One of the most common problems is changing a group of decision-makers on your end during the project. For example, if you are about to hire a new marketing director, it's better to wait until the moment they are on board. Otherwise, a new person with another vision could slow down or even wreck the project. It's not because this new vision needs to be corrected but because we are not synchronized from the beginning, and the rationale of past decisions needs to be clarified.

At this stage, we need to discuss and approve how we communicate and deliver results. Our usual approach to presenting results is a combination of the screencast, in which we explain our thinking process and rationale, and a PDF or Figma presentation. It helps to ensure that each team member from your end has a chance to hear the same information and avoid issues with finding a comfortable time slot for each teammate. After you check the update, we can hop on a call, answer questions, discuss and get your feedback. However, some clients are not used to watching screencasts and ignore them. We need to know this upfront, or else important information and rationale could be missing.

We always start with understanding a product and company. We invite the client's team to complete a questionnaire to determine the archetype, core values, and brand perception from within the company.

To help us understand the brand archetype, we ask the client to conduct a small workshop within your team. You will have to complete four easy exercises and make a common decision on several key questions for branding.

At this stage, we audit the existing visual identity of the product/company, analyze competitors, and do a comparative analysis. Competitor analysis includes analysis of the brand position, mission, brand promise, brand values, and analysis of competitors' verbal and visual identity. The primary archetype is identified for each competitor. Studying competitors allows you to identify practical solutions for brand differentiation among competitors.

Based on the previous steps' information, we hypothesize the applicable brand archetype, appropriate brand positioning, character, and attributes.

This stage is all about brand personality. It helps to understand how your brand will look, speak, and act. The document includes brand archetype, brand positioning, brand values, brand promise, character, visual brand expression, tone and voice, and attributes. This stage helps to build a foundation for future brand identity.

Effective naming is rooted in the core brand personality and archetype and could be an inspiration for further conceptual metaphors or even be a core of it. Depending on the requirements for the name, the process could vary. It's faster to create names for internal products, and it gets longer for international brands. We can do research for similar names, but we are not providing a trademark registration service. You may need to find a separate partner to register all legal rights for the name.

This stage is all about visual inspiration and conceptual metaphor. It helps to align on the emotional aspect. This stage helps to build a foundation for a future color palette, shapes, and dynamics. A conceptual metaphor is like a glue that connects all pieces of visual design, web design, and storytelling and is rooted in an archetype and functional structure of a brand.

At this stage, we explore concepts and general directions on how the logo could look. We follow visual positioning and brand expression findings and recommendations. This stage helps to examine a lot of concepts and shapes fast.

Hypothesis validation

During the sketching phase, we can conduct some qualitative research. For example, we create an online poll using Usabilityhub, Google Forms, or Typeform to validate concepts of metaphor and emotional levels. This research usually aims to check what adjectives people associate with a given concept, if they see a metaphor, and if there are any negative connotations.

We refine the shape when we define a few (up to 3) sketches. We are not exploring colors at this stage - our focus is on form and tonal contrast. We also research similar logos to avoid similarities with existing brands. However, it's not trademark research.

When it comes to a combination of a logo sign and a logo mark (which is a common situation for digital brands because they need icons, favicons, social network thumbnails, etc.), we start working on the wordmark when a logo sign draft shape is approved. We explore typefaces, cases, and design lettering to find the best pair for a logo sign.

Color matters. People mostly judge products based on color, which was proved by various experiments. We spent time exploring proper color combinations to make the logo and identity its best potential. Our decision-making process is grounded in information about the cultural, physiological, and psychological influence of color.

Hypothesis validation

At this stage, we usually have two semi-finalists. When we define colors, we could test an emotional reaction and ensure that a combination of shapes and colors doesn't have a similarity with any existing brands.

At this stage, we construct a logo sign and wordmark with grids to balance it perfectly. We create documentation to explain rules on how to use visual identity assets correctly. The complexity of the guidelines depends on the scope and project needs.

Illustrations are a part of visual language. It helps to tell stories not only verbally but in the visual layer of communication, which gets faster connection with human minds through the limbic brain. Not all of the brand's visual identity matches well with illustrations, so we keep this stage as the final. It also requires not only creating a system but also creating actual illustrations and icons. This process can take time.

For those who want faster tangible results and are not ready to dive deep into the creative process with our team. We reduce the number of approvals during the process to a reasonable minimum. After each stage, your team can take the results and continue with an internal team.

We know that startups are always restricted to two things: time and money. So to be successful startup has to grow fast and follow an agile approach as much as possible. It's also true for growing SMBs with agile thinking. Moreover, a client could have some talented experts in-house and want to speed up or reduce costs by involving them.

The funnel is based on the Double Diamond and Design Thinking approaches. Each stage could include different exercises depending on the project's needs and restrictions; however, there are core exercises we won't recommend skipping. Regardless of the scope of each stage, we deliver tangible results. You can take it and continue with your internal team or with us. You decide.

There are three basic principles of our approach:

• Flexibility. The project scope and number of brand exercises depend on the project needs.
• Value driven. Each stage ends with a tangible result.
• Trust. We reduce the number of ongoing approvals, saving time but not hiding some internal and creative decision-making processes from you.

The success of the project starts before the actual work does. So before we start, we would like to understand the formal request from your team and real business and personal goals. We need to discuss restrictions, expectations, decision-making process in detail. We must ensure we are on the same page and understand each other.

It's also essential to do a risk assessment. One of the most common problems is changing a group of decision-makers on your end during the project. For example, if you are about to hire a new marketing director, it's better to wait until the moment they are on board. Otherwise, a new person with another vision could slow down or even wreck the project. It's not because this new vision needs to be corrected but because we are not synchronized from the beginning, and the rationale of past decisions needs to be clarified.

At this stage, we need to discuss and approve how we communicate and deliver results. Our usual approach to presenting results is a combination of the screencast, in which we explain our thinking process and rationale, and a PDF or Figma presentation. It helps to ensure that each team member from your end has a chance to hear the same information and avoid issues with finding a comfortable time slot for each teammate. After you check the update, we can hop on a call, answer questions, discuss and get your feedback. However, some clients are not used to watching screencasts and ignore them. We need to know this upfront, or else important information and rationale could be missing.

At this stage, we need to understand who you are, the intrinsic values of the team and founders, what's the brand equity, what are functional and emotional benefits of your product and brand, what the competitive landscape looks like, what the core archetype of your brand is, and what users think about your current brand (if it exists).

Teammates rarely talk about their vision of the brand and product or the values. Even if it seems you are synchronized, it usually appears that you are not. We challenge you with practice-proved questions, propose to do a workshop, and sometimes conduct interviews with team members. It allows us to understand how different people in your team see the brand, analyze it and make all the differences obvious to you. It also helps to understand the primary archetype of your brand. It's all about looking at your brand from the inside.

Analyzing the competitive landscape helps to understand archetypes and storytelling of other brands to range sweet spots for future positioning. Analyzing user feedback helps to understand if there is any gap between what you say about your brand and what people hear about it, highlight areas of disconnection and consider it in the future. Again, it's about looking at your brand from the outside.

It's important to underscore that we focus on building a brand that fits your vision of the brand rather than trying to please every user and follow their requests.

Now that we understand more about your team’s values, competitors, and brand reputation, we can recommend areas for positioning the brand in the minds of others. First, we came up with one of the few possible positioning hypotheses. Then, we explained how each would influence your visual and verbal identity and future brand behavior.

We also propose a conceptual metaphor rooted in the archetype and function of your product/brand. The conceptual metaphor at this stage is a simple yet powerful phrase constriction “Your brand is like …”. Once this metaphor and positioning are approved, and all your team inspired, we can move forward.

Functional results at this stage look like a document, the base for our future creative process. It’s like a compass for design experts and a set of acceptance criteria for you. Instead of judging future design concepts subjectively, which leads to a vast number of iterations until you find a compromise that pleases the visual aesthetic of different team members, you have more objective parameters which can even be measured.

Sometimes positioning or re-positioning requires creating a new name for a brand or product. We also do naming at this stage and link it to both positioning and conceptual metaphor. Depending on the requirements for the name, the process could vary. It's faster to create names for internal products, and it gets longer for international brands. We can research similar names, but we are not providing a trademark registration service. You may need to find a separate partner to register all legal rights for the name.

At this stage, it’s time to visualize what a brand with selected positioning and conceptual metaphor could look like. It’s not a final well-polished design asset but a creative vision, a direction.

There are a few parameters of a good visual concept. It should match the archetype visual aesthetic, extend and support the idea of conceptual metaphor and inspire you, precisely in this order. Remember, we are not doing visual identity for you; we do it for the brand. So it should fit the brand, not the exact person. If your team is ready to judge concepts according to the positioning, that’s great. If it’s hard to switch off a subjective part, we’ll help and conduct 7-second tests using UsabilityHub.

To be clear, getting the whole team inspired is essential. Otherwise, it might be hard to let the new brand land. But if we base our decisions on the opinions of the current team members only, it might not be a durable solution.

At this stage, we are not talking about the exact right tone of color, typography kerning, or even the font. It can be improved later. What’s important is the potential of the concept for further flexible growth.

When we approve the concept, we are not changing it in the future — improving, adopting, polishing but not changing.

Now it's time to decompose the visual concept, improve each part, and gather it back again. Depending on the concept and project needs, we'll work on the logo sign, wordmark, illustrative and illustrative systems, motion studies, and brand typography and create basic guidelines to explain the core visual principles of the brand's visual identity.

During this stage, we'll constantly compare results with the positioning, conceptual and visual metaphor to ensure it follows the approved direction. In case of need, we'll conduct UsabilityHub tests to measure accuracy.

You can decide whether you want to dive deeper into approving details or trust us to do this for you. Of course, certain decision-making is required, but you can choose the intensity.

Basic guidelines and visual identity principles are not the ends. It’s the beginning — the beginning of the brand life. Sometimes clients want our help and support in creating actual design assets and applications of the visual language, extending the guidelines, or just calibrating your internal design team. Ideally, it’s the beginning of a journey of an ongoing partnership.

Before starting the project, we need to understand your formal request, business goals, and restrictions. We'll also assess potential risks, such as changes in decision-makers. Communication and delivery of results will be discussed and approved, with our usual approach being a screencast and PDF/Figma presentation. Feedback will be gathered through calls. Let us know if you have any preferences or concerns.

During the discovery stage, we thoroughly investigate various aspects related to the product, company, industry, and market. Our team dives deep to gain a comprehensive understanding of the specifics, including the product's unique features and selling points, company history, goals, vision, industry trends, and consumer behavior. This information helps us develop a strategic approach that aligns with the brand's objectives and sets a strong foundation for creating effective marketing campaigns.

Result: Deep dive into the project context. Understanding of the brand, product, and market conditions. Synchronization in understanding tasks, goals, and possible solutions. Setting and monitoring expectations regarding project results.

Value: Deep understanding of the main challenge within the project. Building a project roadmap.

Treating the product and company with attention, we seek a deep understanding of both. To achieve this, we invite our client's team to complete a questionnaire designed to help us determine the brand's archetype, core values, and internal perception.

Result: An analytical presentation with the resume of the survey results. It reflects the current internal vision of the brand and synchronizes these perceptions with the archetypal approach.

Value: Obtaining up-to-date data on the consistency of opinions among brand team members. Determining the current position on the brand development path.

To deepen our understanding of the brand archetype, we ask the client to conduct a small workshop within your team. You will have to complete 4 easy exercises and come to a common decision on several key questions for branding.

Result: An informational presentation that captures the agreed position of all the brand team members regarding the character, values, and positioning of the brand.

Value: Creating within the brand team a consolidated vision of the character, values, and positioning of the brand. A high degree of internal team synchronization is achieved as a result of general open discussion.

At this stage, we conduct a thorough analysis of competitors, including their brand position, mission, promise, values, and verbal and visual identity. The primary archetype is identified for each competitor. Studying competitors allows you to identify practical solutions for brand differentiation among competitors.

Result: An analytical presentation with a detailed analysis of each competitor. A summary of the archetypal, emotional, and rational attributes, tone of voice of the brand, identity, and product structure. Comparative analysis of the brand and its competitors.

Value: Modeling the market landscape, building a positioning map taking into account competitors, and formulating recommendations for brand development within the current competitive environment.

Based on the previous steps' information, we hypothesize the applicable brand archetype, appropriate brand positioning, character, and attributes.

Result: Presentation of one or more strategic directions for brand development with argumentation and comparative analysis.

Value: Propositions of consistent brand development, based on a deep understanding of the product, target audience, competitors' activity, and market trends.

This stage is all about brand personality. It helps to understand how your brand will appear, communicate, and behave. The document includes brand archetype, brand positioning, brand values, brand promise, character, visual brand expression, tone and voice, attributes. This stage helps to build a foundation for future brand identity.

Result: A structured brand personality guide that includes a detailed description of the key aspects of the brand: archetype, values, mission, character, rational and emotional benefits, and tone.

Value: A universal source of fundamental brand information is a fundamental element in building a brand and maintaining its consistency. Information from the Brand personality document is the basis for developing a brand identity, communication, and media strategy.

This stage is all about visual inspiration and conceptual metaphor. It helps to align on the emotional aspect. This stage helps to build a foundation for a future color palette, shapes, and dynamics. A conceptual metaphor acts as the adhesive that binds all elements of visual design, web design, and storytelling, rooted in the brand's archetype and functional structure.

Result: Presentation describing the concept, explaining the connection of the concept with the brand archetype and its key aspects, as well as a mood board.

Value: Building a basis that accelerates work on the brand's visual system and achieves consistency of visual language at all levels. Creating unique associations and emotional connections between the audience and the brand that makes a positive impact on attracting the audience’s attention, recognizability, and brand loyalty.

At this stage, the interface design team is involved. Specialists study the brief and related materials from the client, synchronize their understanding of the brand with the strategy department, define goals and requirements, success criteria and limitations (product, design, development).

When redesigning an existing website, an expert audit of the client's screens is conducted, flagging weak UX/UI decisions. The team clarifies all unclear points with the client. Next, competitors' sites are analyzed, noting strong UX/UI solutions that can be adopted.

Result:

• The design team has a clear understanding of the client, their goals, requirements, and constraints.
• A screen map (screenshots) of the client's website and individual pages of competitors' websites with comments from the team is prepared.

Value:

• All project participants are synchronized in expectations and capabilities.
• A common understanding of the product and possible ways of solving the tasks is established.
• The area of ineffective concepts for a particular task is clear, thus reducing the time spent on the job.

Based on the previous steps, the logical structure of the site is formed. It defines what data should be placed on each page and how the pages are connected to each other.

Result: Schematic representation of the structure of the site taking into account the convenience of the user and the realization of the client's tasks.

Value: This allows you to visualize the structure and relationships of meaning blocks, plan the user journey, define hierarchy and logic, increase the speed of information discovery, and detect problems in the structure.

Useful when working with pages with complex architecture and non-obvious hierarchy. We can skip this step if the content is finalized and the team has no doubts about the logical architecture of the pages.

Based on the sitemap, all screens are assembled in a more detailed form. This involves determining the future grid, defining the general shape of accent blocks, positioning CTAs, and whenever possible, populating the blocks with text content.

We also identify and resolve conflicts between semantic modules and ensure that content aligns with visual elements. Additionally, a representative from the development department assesses the complexity of proposed solutions to minimize the risk of missing deadlines.

Result: A series of screens detailing the content architecture of the site and the arrangement of semantic blocks on the pages. Also, designers can create and test clickable prototypes for complex cases to ensure proper functionality of user workflows.

Value: Understanding the mapping of content in the space and a general idea of possible design options for elements that will fit the chosen structure. This step helps to significantly reduce the time spent in the styleboard and design research phases.

Considering industry specifics, competitive analysis, client preferences, and previous work stages, we create 1-3 visual boards. These boards depict the product's mood in alignment with the archetype, showcasing color examples, shapes, and styles that will guide our design phase. The client then selects one of the proposed directions.

Result: A mosaic of sample images that reflect the brand character and key features that will form the basis of future page designs. Usually, the team prepares 2-3 boards.

Value: Significantly reduce the time to find suitable options during the design research phase.

At this stage, we choose 1-2 low-fidelity screens and apply the approved styleboard's design. We select color and text styles, determine headline sizes and styles, and choose photo, illustrative content, icons, shapes, rounding, and more.

Result: The client is offered several design options for the selected pages for approval. The design meets all the requirements defined at the previous stages of work.

Value: Approval with the client of the design of 1-2 basic pages allows defining rules and styles, to put in the base of repetitive components, on the basis of which the assembly of the remaining pages will be faster and more efficient.

As soon as the design direction is approved, the team starts finalizing the pages approved by the client, introduces color and text styles into the library, adjusts indents, forms comps of repetitive design elements. Next, the design is extended to the rest of the site pages, with new styles and elements being formed along the way. Once a page is approved by the client, a tablet and mobile view is formed for it. On the client's request, an additional dark/light theme can be developed for the website.

In parallel with the design, we create a library of elements and rules that allow designers to quickly build new pages and individual modules. It includes UI components and their states, color and font styles.

Result: All pages of the site are made in a unified style for three platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile) and are ready to be handed over to development. UI Kit ready for use by other designers.

Value: The designed layouts help the development team understand the rules and features of the web pages. UI Kit is used to avoid inconsistency and errors when creating new pages, speeding up the work of designers and developers.

After the design goes into development, the design team may have various questions or requests for additional screen states that the design team will cover.

Result: Coordinated work between the design and development teams and shaping the end result to meet all client requirements.