The Evolution of a Brand and Website

Creative people are problem solvers. That’s our function. How do you solve problems? Trust and some really great conversations empowered me to envision what People Pattern’s brand should look like. I gained that trust by learning how to ask the right questions. What do you want to say? Who do you want to say it to? What kinds of feeling or personality do you want to project to your audience? The answers to those questions inform the solutions. 

With my Vespanaut (referenced here in Part 1) as the jumping off point, we had many brainstorming meetings to flesh out how to tell the story of our product and company. Those meetings had lots of laughter and head nodding. We were all excited about the branding trajectory. I was shocked at first by how fun this was. We then established what the essence of our branding’s soul would be, informed with a visual plan I had thus far only put in words and rough sketches. 

The People Pattern Story

Ken broke it down for me. So People Pattern is a software platform built by world-renowned data scientists, statisticians, linguists and PhDs. Led by Professor Jason Baldridge, using the science of predictive analytics, natural language processing and machine learning to inform your strategy for customer acquisition and activation. To me it is amazing what is done here. It’s really cutting edge and the level of confidence in the value of what we have that our few competitors lack is palpable.

Ken and I were both kids of the 80’s. What did “edge of the future” sound like to our kid selves back then?

With People Pattern being the next generation in analytics software, our catch phrase was coined, “Welcome to the edge of the future”. So when we dug down deep on the question “What does the edge of the future look like for us?” Lots of imagery started flooding into my consciousness immediately. Ken and I were both kids of the 80’s. What did “edge of the future” sound like to our kid selves back then? The futuristic imaginary worlds I lived in my head back then were a guide. We wanted to inject our nostalgia and passion for that era into what we were doing. Velcro wallets, John Hughes movies, Back to the Future, the MTV astronaut, all made us feel something so right. We imagined that it too would resonate with the decision makers of our client audience. We decided to incorporate that into our brand. Nostalgia of course is nothing new (in more ways that one). Our past pop culture is being celebrated everyday out there. I have to admit the timely and beautiful opening sequence of the television show Halt and Catch Fire (which is incidentally about fictional software companies in Texas) added inspiration to my fire. But I was confident I could create something unique regardless with that spirit as my guide. Check my People Pattern Pinterest page for part of that visual conversation.

Brand

What is a brand? A brand is commercial identity. It is what a person thinks of when they encounter a company’s name or its product’s name. Successful rebranding (changing the look of a brand) is harder and more expensive the more established it is and usually only done calculatingly, which tells us consistency is a highly valued component of a brand. I felt a lot of responsibility and pressure to get this right early on, when I had the most leverage, chronologically speaking. So what existing components did we have that I could build on? Now was the time to change anything if it made sense.

Color

Before I came on, we hired Tahiti Blue to design a great look for our product. I loved the color palette they established. It already had history and momentum for the company. Great! If I was going change it I felt I would have to have a really good reason, and I had none. So let’s use it.

Logo

The logo was present before my arrival. The logo also had history and momentum, so we decided to build on it, and I set up guidelines to define how it was to be used. 

Web Design

Our co-founder and CEO, Ken Cho hated the website they had rolling when I came on board. We quickly replaced it with a simple temporary one page site while I designed the next stage of the website.

Initial Temporary Design

Right off the bat, my earlier live iteration of the website didn’t stray far from the look and feel of my first Vespanaut apparel designs. It quickly evolved from there.

First Version Side Scrolling Parallax Design

I 86’ed the stars, developed gradient colors honoring the initial color palette, but  expanded it a bit by adding a yellow, orange and variations of existing colors. I pushed some boundaries and brought us somewhere different, fun and almost ridiculous. 

First Version Evolving

As I built the different multi-page sections I started adding more layers to the visual content. I experimented by rolling on my back on my skateboard taking panoramic high resolution photos of the concrete floors, brick walls and plywood ceilings of our building to add some depth and value to the work. I used vector art made from my own and found photography to experiment with as multiple layers at different opacities and gradient colors.

While we liked where this was going for refinement purposes, I felt that I needed to bring more balance and consistency to the website.

Second Version Side Scrolling Parallax Design

My next iteration to go live had one goal with a couple steps in mind. Goal: Elevate the general look and feel to a more luxury brand feel. I started to nail that feeling as the previous version was evolving and I wanted to run with that a bit further. Step 1: Elevate or replace the illustrations with cleaner digital drawings and add a grittier texture of vector art layer to add depth and value. Step 2: Use a simple single light gray color background throughout the site to create consistency and a clean look. Accomplished: The new refined look of our brand increased confidence in new clients at the introduction stage, and had measurable ROI success in the subsequent quarter’s sales.

Up to this point all of our website was hosted in WordPress and coded by out of house web developers, under my direction. To speed up the development process, I designed and published our mobile and tablet versions separately with Adobe Muse. Happy with the side scrolling parallax desktop experience, we kept it in WordPress until the next stage.

Current Responsive Design

Adobe made an announcement in October 2015, that there would be a new version of their tool Muse in early 2016 to allow the creation of completely responsive websites. I made plans to bring over our entire website to Muse. I had become really comfortable using it, and it didn’t require the need for a developer to implement. I could easily design, control every action of the user experience, and publish it myself. I began the redesign process February 15, 2016, the day the new responsive version of Muse went live. I can’t recommend Adobe Muse enough to fellow designers out there. Learn how to use the new version here. My favorite resource for widgets is muse-themes.com 

Latest Brand Guide 

People Pattern’s brand builds confidence at a glance to the big brand clients People Pattern serves. It also demonstrates a simple, fun, well thought out visual experience to match the value our data driven audience insight gathering technology offers.