Category: Branding

Smart Commute: TDM

Smart Commute

A smarter way to get there

Smart Commute is a Transportation Management Organization that promotes smarter commute options to communities and businesses in the North Denver Metro area. Smart Commute (formerly Smart Commute Metro North), wanted to celebrate their 10-year anniversary by launching a new name, logo and website. We built them a custom, WordPress site that made it easier for users to find information and made lead generation a priority.

Features

The first order of business was a new identity. The old one had been created quite a while ago, and looked pretty dated.

Then we gave them a new custom, WordPress site that focused on the programs and resources they offer both employers and residents in the North Denver Metro area. They also wanted a component that allowed them to gather user data, so we built a Downloads section that requires an email to get the free download.

We used illustrations nstead of trying to use poor quality photography that maybe didn’t illustrate the content well enough, which gives the site a lot of personality, and helps them stand out in a crowded field.

Capabilities

Identity Design

Site Design

User Interface

User Experience

Site Development

The new identity gave the organization a more modern feel, and focused more on symbolic movement, rather than specific modes of transportation. As a bonus, there's a subtle (accidental) nod to some of the now-defunct airlines in the sixties.

We used illustrations as the main graphic elements to complement the personality of the organization, and to help them stand out from other TMAs in the area.

The Programs and Resources pages are the most important sections of the site. Both residents and employers use the Programs page to learn about current offerings from Smart Commute, and the Resources page gives employers access to data compiled by Smart Commute, and residents links to important transportation agencies that service the area.

Credits

Fully responsive, custom site built in WordPress. Copy by Laura Churchman.

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Transportation Solutions: TDM Association

Transportation Solutions

Making change. Together.

This Transportation Management Association has the goal of making it easier for residents and employees move into and out of their Denver community. They needed an updated, more modern, more professional site that speaks to three different audiences: employers, residents and land developers. Their old site had last been designed about six years ago and had become bloated with pages and a user experience that was confusing at best. We reorganized their site, bringing the focus more to their resources section where we provided the different audiences with ways to tailor their commutes.

Features

We streamlined the user experience to make it easier for users to find the information they needed easily and quickly. We also trimmed down the overall amount of information on the site into more ‘bite-sized’ chunks, to make everything less overwhelming. We focused on the Resources page that hosted important links for each of the three audiences.

Capabilities

Site Design

User Interface

User Experience

Site Development

Identity Design

We gave them a new identity that felt urban, and modern, and focused on movement rather than specific modes of transportation.

A bright accent color helped give the site some personality, and overlays let us put copy with full-width photos and still keep the pages relatively short in height.

Credits

Fully responsive, custom site built in WordPress. Copy by Laura Churchman.

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Korgy App

Korgy

Swipe that job

KJ Technical Recruiters saw a hole that needed to be filled. People in the service industry (think servers, baristas, bartenders) didn’t have a good way to find available jobs in their area. We built an app based on the Tinder model that would allow them to swipe quickly through available jobs. Search filters allowed them to set a mile radius (a lot of these people aren’t willing to travel far for work) that would limit their search results, as well as filter out by job type. The app automatically sends their application to the hiring manager, and lets them keep track of applications they’ve sent. After two weeks, open positions refresh which allow them to reconsider jobs they may have swiped past in the past.

Capabilities

Design

User Interaction

User Experience

App Design

Branding

A new brand

The owner wanted something unique and memorable, so we started with several ideas for names. Once we landed on three different options that he liked, we started in on identity concepts.

From the beginning, the owner was pretty set on the name Korgy. He really loves those weird, little dogs, and he thought it would provide a memorable name for the app.

Round Two

We landed on two different options that the client wanted to see in color. Each had completely different personalities—both fairly playful, but one more traditional, and the other more contemporary.

Color exploration

The client decided that the options from the previous round were too playful, and didn’t speak enough to the service industry aspect of the app. So, we went back to one from the first round that highlighted that more strongly, and used it to explore some color palettes.

The app

While we had been exploring logo options, we started working on possible designs for the app.

User Dashboard

For easy management of job openings, we built a dashboard that hiring managers could use to build wanted ads and post them to the app.

Credits

Built in React by Joseph Chambers. Copy by Laura Churchman.

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Various Logos

Brand identities

A collection of various identities I’ve created over the years.

Capabilities

Illustration

Brand Strategy

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Shiny Shoe Games

Shiny Shoe

Polished

Shiny Shoe’s existing logo and website – a golden high-top sneaker and minimalist site designed by a college student – weren’t doing the firm any favors, especially when making presentations to potential corporate clients less familiar with their work. Founded in 2011, the studio had fallen into a pattern of handling a few consulting projects for larger game developers and corporate clients and then using their profits to focus on creating original games, including the popular PuzzleRaiders.

Founder/CEO Mark Cooke recognized he needed a more integrated business model, one that would allow Shiny Shoe to grow, while assigning development time to consulting projects and original work simultaneously.

Capabilities

Identity

Branding

Collateral

Initial concepts

With a name like ‘Shiny Shoe’, you don’t really need to explore different ‘themes’ for a new identity. You can however, explore different ways to present the idea of shoe and getting across this personality of artisan, hand-crafted video games.

Round Two

The client liked several of the initial concepts that they wanted to explore a little further.

First up the monster, which represented the wild imagination they relied on when creating their games. I tightened it up a little further, and explored some different font and color options.

They really liked the idea of it, but wanted me to explore some different types of monsters, so I went back to the sketch stage to quickly come up with some different looks. I narrowed them down to these three so as not to overwhelm.

The client decided that a monster just wasn’t quite right as a representation of their brand, so they asked me to explore a character instead.

They liked the idea of the cat and the gorilla, so I explored different poses and tightened up the gorilla. Ultimately, they felt that the cat was too cute, and the gorilla didn’t have enough sass.

Round three

We could never quite come to an agreement on an appropriate character or monster, so the client decided they wanted me to explore a couple of the other concepts with different fonts and color variations.

Final

The client really liked the hand drawn aspect of the shoelaces concept since it alluded to the fact that their original games were all made ‘by hand’ and spoke to the attention to detail they brought to each of their projects.

The stationery

Once we finalized the logo, I created a suite of templates they client could use for their different brand materials: letterhead, business cards, invoices and presentation. The different types of pieces allowed me to utilize some of the other logo color options I’d explored in earlier rounds.

Credits

Built in conjunction with e9.

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Holborn

Making reinsurance sexi-er

This privately held reinsurance company dates back almost 100 years. Their success is a strong testament to their reputation within the industry, but as the firm approached its Centennial, they decided they needed to update their brand. I started with a logo refresh, including a new brand standards manual, created a whole new suite of collateral materials and a new B2B advertising campaign.

Capabilities

Design

Branding

A new brand

A complete rebrand begins with a new identity. Holborn’s strong reputation in the industry made them hesitant to stray too far from their old mark, but they did agree they needed a new icon to liven up their simple sans-serif font.

Round One: Initial Concepts

I explored several different ideas that spoke to a few of the strong characteristics of Hoborn’s personality:

Growth: Over their 100-year history, Holborn had solid, continued growth
Individualized Attention: They custom tailor their products per client
Teamwork: the company is 100% employee owned, so everyone has a stake in the outcome.

Round Two

The client ultimately felt that the Teamwork theme spoke best to what they wanted to convey about their company, and in reality it encompassed the important aspects of the other two themes. With that, they narrowed down the chosen concepts to three they felt worked the best.

Color exploration

Once the client landed on a final choice, I explored different color options that would help them appear to be a more contemporary company. Ultimately, however, the client felt they should keep the red from their current logo, so I built a new palette around that.

Building the brand standards

After an exhaustive exploratory, the client felt they needed fonts that looked contemporary, but were still fairly conservative. With over 400 employees all responsible for producing different materials, they also needed fonts that would play nicely with everyone’s operating systems. A tall order. Google fonts ended up having exactly what we needed.

Next came the collateral pieces

A brand new logo means you also need brand new office stationery as well as a revamp of your brochures, newsletters and other marketing materials.

The advertising campaign

Holborn felt the themes we explored in the logo development phase would work really well to build an advertising campaign around, so we created ads that spoke to the different aspects of their company that would appeal to their clients: other insurance agencies.

Credits

Built in conjunction with e9.

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Elevated Computing

Elevate your IT

Elevated, an IT firm, was tired of their old site. They hated nearly everything about it, but mostly they felt it was hurting their business. The thing Elevated has going for them that makes them better than all the other IT companies out there is their level of customer service. That and, unlike most IT companies, they are not vendor specific and will use whatever products work best for their clients. Add that to 24/7 customer support and offices distributed across the United States (which allows for faster response times), and they truly are a head above the rest. They wanted a site that better reflected what made them stand out.

Features

Their only constraint was that it had to be a one-page, parallax site. I convinced them that they also needed a new identity, so we started there, and finished up with a new, fully responsive site built in WordPress and a whole mess of Javascript. We also built a dual navigation system that lets users move through the site in either a traditional way, via a header nav, or chronologically with little banners that drop down at the bottom of each section.

Capabilities

Art Direction

Branding

Site Design

User Interface

User Experience

New identity

We convinced Elevated that if they really wanted to revamp their brand, they needed to start with their identity—which looked like it had been designed back in the ’90s. For the first round of new identities, Andy and I came up with three initial ‘buckets’ under which we fit three taglines and quite a few visual concepts.

We presented computer roughs, but kept them black and white, hoping that would help them focus on concepts rather than content.

Further refinement

For the next round, I explored several of the visual concepts the client liked from the first round, as well as some new ideas we had to fit the tagline. I focused on refining the icons and explored different typefaces that I felt would complement the icons.

Final color

Once the client landed on one of the concepts from the second round, I moved into color exploration. These are just a few of the many, many combinations I tried. I only wanted to show the client color palettes I felt fit the objective of a professional firm in a technical field that was easy to work with. I limited what I showed the client so the options wouldn’t be overwhelming.

The site

Once an identity was settled on, I moved on to the website. Because of a smaller budget, I didn’t have the luxury of really exploring content and functionality through wireframes and user flows, so I limited our interaction exploration to two simple wireframe options and a site map that helped us plan out the majority of the site before we moved into developing content and design.

We ended up with a parallax, one-page site that has some interesting little touches. The line and circle graphics move on different levels, at different speeds as the user scrolls through the site. Each section has a banner that alerts the user to the next section that will load as they scroll. Users can navigate using the more traditional nav bar, or chronologically using the banners.