How did we rebrand the new Indicius?
My Role
Leadership
Strategy
Branding
UI/UX
Date
2021
Client
Indicius is an agency that specializes in branding, UX/UI, and front-end. I joined the Indicius team as a mid-senior in 2017, where I had the opportunity to quickly grow and position myself as a lead designer, participating at the decision-making table for the company. At the end of 2022, I decided to leave to take a break and seek new challenges.
Design Team
Yanel Bottini
Macarena Gonzalez Cazon
Nicolas Baumgartner
Challenges
The Indi team went through a process in which we defined the purpose of Indicius, using tools such as the Golden Circle and a VoC Research, which allowed us to understand how our customers perceived us. Together with other collaborative and alignment workshops, we were able to renew our services, mission, manifesto, and objectives.
This brought us a challenge: Our website, the most important asset of any agency, did not show our true identity. But just thinking about updating it was difficult because we also had problems with our brand identity:
A logo-dependent system: if a composition did not carry the logo, it didn’t seem to belong to Indicius
Many limitations in the color palette
A boring and outdated typography that did not help us improve the system
A Frankenstein of materials accumulated along the way that did not represent our company in a coherent way
My role
This project arose from a problem that I was able to detect, but more importantly, I was able to convince my partners that Indicius really deserved to go through a rebranding process. From the first day to the end, I participated in this project in a brand leader role, especially because I had led the scaling of the identity for the following 3 years.
Process and Deliverables
Together with Yanel and Macarena, two senior designers on the team, we explored the brand’s visual aspect. We put all the textual assets from the first stage into a collaborative board and began to identify elements that could be translated visually.
In this board, we also put visual systems from other companies and analyzed the competition, understanding the positive and negative aspects of the references.
Then, we tested many typographies and color palettes. We played with the logo until we found the perfect shape, representing both the old and new version of Indicius. This stage also resulted in multiple visual system explorations, creating various compositions, quickly seeking feedback from the team, and then converging into a consolidated system.
At the end of the branding process, we decided to start a new phase: the design and development of the Indi-website. This stage was even more collaborative than the branding stage. After creating the first version of the site content, we invited 6 designers from the team to create a Style Tile with the new branding and later, in a workshop, we voted on the best ideas, creating a heatmap of the most relevant elements.
Parallel to the process, we sought to define the structure and goals of this website, so we invited the entire team to respond to the following:
What do you think we are looking for with the redesign of the website?
Which sections do we think should be included?
What works and what doesn't work on the current site?
With the data we collected, we created insights and categorized them based on the website page to which they corresponded. Then, we voted on the most important insights and those selected were rephrased in the form of How Might We questions, in order to begin creating actionable items.
With this solid start, plus validated copywriting work, Macarena and I moved on to design the site together. Of course, there were multiple iterations and rounds of feedback, as the release had more than 10 pages.
Before shipping everything out we tested the site with partners, friends and clients, and even though we felt like we couldn't wait anymore we implemented user feedback before the launch.
My personal feeling is that this was one of the most successful projects I had the chance to lead and design. This is because it included:
Collaboration: We were able to integrate a team of multiple talents. The constant rounds of feedback, the use of collaborative boards, and the clear objectives allowed many people to contribute.
Scalability: Developing a scalable system was one of our goals and we achieved it. Year after year we were able to create new brand elements, staying consistent but without creating barriers to creativity. An example is the new pages that were added to the site, the ease with which the team created pieces for our social networks for years, and the explorations in 3D, print, and sound.
Learning: Going through this whole process rebuilt the way we approach branding processes in front of clients. We elevated the quality of this service.
