FUSION Product Branding
Objective: To reconfigure our product brand suite, to better suit the amount of products Keyloop sells and categorise them in a more cohesive and understandable way for our customers to understand.
Role: Brand Designer
Outcomes: Deliver a framework, icons and idents to fit a product suite while on brand and providing a premium feel. Used to create:
Memorable Identity
Trust and Credibility
Effective Communication
Streamlined Marketing Efforts
Discovery
The challenges with scaling Keyloop’s old product branding.
Legacy
The UX team have highlighted the fact that we categorise our products due to the mass and complexity of the customer journey and need to be categorised; this has led to an abundance of colours with added inadvertent complexity. With the differentiation of category demarked by colour, we have a potentially messy and off-brand product suite. With the recent changes to Keyloop, it no longer remains on brand.
Limited
As Keyloop grows, colour is not the best differentiator for product categories, as we are sure to run out, with the addition of finance, fleet and other product themes.
Language
From a practical standpoint, products with more than 1 or 2 words become a challenge of which letters to use, or some product acronyms have the same initials, such as sales and service docs.
Defining design principles, patterns and process which would be a consistent foundation for the iconography to be derived from.
Radial Edges - We use rounded-off corners or radial edges in our designs. Rounded corners are psychologically associated with safety, approachability and friendliness.
Colour – Primarily, the colour usage will be minimal within the product, using either black or white. However, when used in a marketing context, colour gradients in line with the wider brand guide may be implemented to create distinction within a design.
Product - DMS
(Dealer Management System)
Portfolio placement
The design process
Step 01
Step 01
Mockups
Description
It is imperative we capture the essential character of the product we are designing for, which is consolidated into three categories which the design is then derived from.
Bio - Dealer Management system, a storage facility for users and systems to read and write records too.
Isometric – Designing in an isometric pattern matches the angles at which other UI screens are displayed in Keyloop’s wider brand; the 60° angle creates a sense of perspective, which will provide distinction and consistency to the portfolio when on display together.
MUI Sizing – UI and Product teams utilise the material UI as a basis for designs. Icons should be a vector and sized at both 192px and 48px, if shadows are to be used they should be flat.
Step 02
The design process in reality for our main Dealer Management System product.
Key Words - open, collaborative, and flexibleSeamlessly connecting retailers with manufacturers, and our extensive ecosystem of approved partners.
Step 02
Define
Consistency – An original Keyloop design system will inform the holistic style of the set. This will help the product identities integrate seamlessly with other product and marketing communications.
Cross-functional – Ideally, in a scalable technology portfolio, the use of iconography is an added theme of design which can be used to enhance Go-To-Market activities as well as being placed on other functions of the business. Removing the disconnect between product and marketing. Setting Expectations straight in all avenues of communication from Keyloop.
Context – We will utilise insights from our product teams to enhance the focus on where the icons will be used. Input from the product teams is essential and will shape how we categorise and apply themes to the products.
Communication - Product ‘icons’ are the visual expression of a brand and product, including their services and tools.
Icons communicate the core idea and intent of a product in a simple, bold, and friendly way. While each icon is visually distinct, all product icons for a brand should be unified through concept and execution.
This strategy will lead to guidelines for product identity that serves as a starting point to ensure Keyloop’s product icons (colours and key design elements) reflect our brand identity.
Construction
Using a 30° Isometric framework, sketches start by utilising Keyloop design principles. The isometric layout gives each icon a sense of depth and opens the canvas to many possibilities.
Step 03
Step 03
Refinement
Isometric design can bring a level of complexity. It is important that the designs remove redundant elements and lines, which could detract from the main purpose of conveying product identity.
Can the work carried out be implemented into other marketing collateral, how will it look along side the wider Keyloop brand?
Simplification was now our priority
Parent Product Brand
Fusion
Product Brand Groups
Domains
Available colours and gradients
“When talking to our customers, we need to simplify our product offering”
Cheif Technology Officer
Product streams
Capabilities
Maintaining the design process from above but now grouping products by the capabilities they posses. Each Icon presents the main capabilities of those products.
Supply
Demand
Operate
Ownership
Develop
This next step, encourages divergant thinking. Now that the design process works for one product - what was the potential that it could be replicated and scaled for many product idents?
However, at this point, we pivoted in our product categorisation. Led by a new Chief Product Officer and an acquisition of ATG. We were no longer producing idents for 40+ products but streamlining products into four key domains and subsequent capabilities. This was a relief as we too had suggested our product offering was too complex to understand, even having been with the company for some time.
Deliver
Once the product categories had been simplified and refined according to the isometric grids and the Domain tags had all been confirmed, we needed to suggest ways in which the Fusion product branding could work in our collateral, this is where the branding had to deliver business value.
The goal of delivery? To enable customers to better visualise and understand Keyloops product offering.
This came in the form of pitch decks, social, email and web campaigns, Advertorials, Expo booths, RFPs, Webinars and agency-led video work.
