My role in the project
- UX/UI Design
- Front-End Development
- Brand Design
- Lead Creative Designer
What was it:
One of my first projects in Phonovation was to create a new, refreshed & consistent brand across all media. Phonovation had already established a logo that was recognisable but needed a long-overdue refresh.
The company also needed a whole branding suite including imagery, letterheads, promotional materials, new font & all of it matching company essence & mission.
I was also needed to create Brand Guidelines for internal and external use so the brand would be presented in a consistent way on any media.
Who was it for:
Phonovation Ltd.
Phonovation is a market leader in providing communication tools like SMS & IVR in Ireland. They also offer SaaS services & SMS anti-fraud services.
As a widely recognisable company in Ireland with clients like Bank of Ireland, Vodafone, Eir, Three, Virgin Media, and many more, it needed a strong brand presence & website to reflect that.
My role in the project
- UX/UI Design
- Front-End Development
- Brand Design
- Lead Creative Designer
I was solely responsible for delivering this project. We needed something new & fresh, but at the same time, we needed to look professional & corporate enough. The brand should still have the same logo but be refreshed.
I started with gathering all the branding materials that we already had. Any versions of logos (and we had a good few of them), letterheads, promotional leaflets, adverts & press releases.
Another step was to gather research on competition, how they do branding, what kind of colours they are using, what feeling they want to achieve, what type of font they are using. During that stage, I had to reflect back on what I’ve learned during my design course about colour schemes, colour affiliation, minimalistic approach & typography.
With all of that gathered, the first step was to redesign the logo. And after many mind-maps, sketching, trying new designs, sleepless nights ☺ I’ve decided that the logo just needs a bit of updating in the form of new typography. That was it, the new logo looked fresh & professional with new font & slightly adjusted logotype & spacing. It appeared very clear on printed material, even in small dimensions.
Another step was to come up with a colour scheme. As Phonovation didn’t have a consistent colour scheme, I had to come up with one that would look good, be corporate, yet don’t be too clinical, too sterile & have a little bit of humanity & passion in it. I went toward a slightly darker red colour for passion and a bit of aggressiveness & contrasted it with a quiet & calm navy colour for that professional feeling. Deciding on complementary colours was easy then, I went with bright blue to add more to the corporate side with neutral colours to finish it off.
The following step was typography. Choosing a font seemed easy at first, but as I realised soon, it wasn’t. I knew I wanted clean, crisp sans-serif but didn’t want to go too cliché. Of course, the first choices were Helvetica, Roboto, Futura, or Lato, but they were missing something unique like Phonovation. And then I came across the Ubuntu font. That was it; it fitted perfectly with the company core values. It was easy to read, confident, clean but not sterile. Ubuntu was standing out, was unique, and had a spark in it.
With all the core elements gathered (logo, colour scheme, font & all company materials, core values & mission statement), it was time for imagery. Again, at first, that seemed easy, but it was far from it. I was going through thousands of images to find ones that would suit our branding, first looking for matching colours a bit warmer and more humane. And it needed to have a person or persons in it using a communication tool. The most challenging part was to find a natural-looking person without what seemed like fake, overperformed smiles. That kind of natural human expression is hard to find among thousands of stock photos. So after hours of digging, I was able to find some that would suit perfectly.
The last step was to bring all of this together in the form of a Brand Guidelines document, create all relevant print & promotional material & design a website that would reflect it all.
Project Hindsight
This project was one of the rare ones where I was solely responsible for branding, social media, UX/UI & website (built under WordPress CMS).
Very challenging & time-consuming but one of the most rewarding when finished. It was also an excellent opportunity to use a wide range of my skills on one project.
Mainly graphic design, use of aesthetics, digital design, UX/UI & front-end development.
Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future