data.ai is the first Unified Data AI platform bringing together consumer data and market estimates. The company completed a name change and rebrand over a year ago with mixed results. My mandate from leadership was to update the brand to be "bold, elegant, luxurious, and enterprise."

 

I began by auditing the brand guide, company website, and marketing materials created over the previous year. Then I turned my attention to voice & tone and its relationship to previous design iterations. This helped me identify the disconnect between content and design that was minimizing the impact of previous marketing efforts.

 

All of data.ai’s messaging is pointed to c-suite and executives, but the visual direction provided by partner were unrelated to messaging. Basically slap a picture or graphic on it and ship it. The truth is data.ai’s messaging speaks to faceless corporations not individuals, so their previous approach to the creative work needed to shift. To do this I stripped away all images, charts, and graphics and only focused on typography to make content the hero.

 

The first step was to adjust the typographical hierarchy of headers and subheads. Then I  decreased the line weight for headers and subheads to provided a bold and more elegant appearance. The next task was to provide visual elements that spoke to the brand. 

 

The “gem” logo was the only design element that survived the name change due to the equity it had built up with leadership. In searching for ways to express the gem as an abstract visual element I thought of the 3 “C”s of diamonds; cut, color, clarity. Then I took those values and looked for geometric shapes that could represent them, which lead to fractal patterns and finally to prisms. By adding the prism as texture it provided a simple repeatable element that could related to the brand.

 

Due to sheer volume of creative requests the decision was made to not to a hard reboot of the brand. Instead a “bottom up” approach was taken to updating the brand; create curiosity within the company by applying the new design style to new marketing materials, reports, social posts, and large events to generate support or the new look and feel.