Cufflink - Brand Refresh
A case study detailing the refresh of the Cufflink brand after recieving external feedback from key stakeholders.
A case study detailing the refresh of the Cufflink brand after recieving external feedback from key stakeholders.
This project was focused on updating the Cufflink brand to reflect the recent company pivot to a more B2B focus after receiving feedback from both corporate clients and advisors that the current brand may be too playful to align with current cyber security market leaders.
To updTo update the brand, I collaborated with a brand identity consultant to create a new style guide, and colour palette along with a series of promotional items and merchandise.
From implementing the new brand across all customer touch points we received favourable feedback within the public arena and felt it overall to be a successful transition with a lot of lessons learned along the way.
From this, we were able to clearly define a visual identity between our B2C product offering (green) and our corporate offerings (blue) these in turn can be used together harmoniously.
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To kick off this project while whilstliaising with our brand consultant we decided to start the project by first creating a series of mood boards based on the emotions and feelings associated with the word ‘Cyber Security’.
This helped us understand the current overall landscape of the cybersecurity space from a graphical standpoint and this we discovered that large companies used dark blues and blacks as their primary colour along with using a variety of san serif fonts.
Based on this research we also developed a competitor's mood board to see how other cybersecurity companies had branded themselves, this allowed us to discover that a lot of companies had used more generic security-themed graphical assets to enhance their overall brand beyond the base two colour palette.
We then finished off our research by looking into a variety of fonts and decided to pick out a selection of suitable fonts and present them against one another.
During this research phase, we sought feedback from stakeholders and held regular meetings to ensure buy-in from all team members. This collaborative effort enabled us to gather a variety of viewpoints on the direction of the new brand and where to improve as we continued to explore and develop the concept further.
Whilst liaising with fellow team members and stakeholders we decided that as a part of the brand refresh, we would also need to update our user personas, merchandise, investor booklets, and promotional content both social and print along with developing a brand guidelines book that would be used to help new starters.
Once we had refined our mood boards and made a few key decisions on what colours and fonts to use we got to work implementing a guideline book on how to use the new colours and fonts.
We also took it a step further and later decided to include a tone of voice for employees to refer to when engaging on social media and any other outward-facing content.
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We first started the document by delving into the brand assets, this broke down some of the key graphics we as a company can use.
This also included a rough visual guide on how and where to use them for example when reporting on key statistics and analytical data we will often display the numbers within large blue or green circles to ensure that it stands out, below are a few images from this section of the booklet.
The next section within the guide was the colour guide. Here broke down the available colours that we could use.
We decided early on that we wanted to expand the current selection as we had noticed some difficulties while creating social media content the designs were becoming stale and with the addition of new colours, we would be more flexible in our design approach.
The new colours were derived from the original Cufflink green colour that was previously used. With each new colour, we made sure to check its accessibility of it against colour blind tests and readability tests.
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The next section consisted of the type of face that was chosen in this case it was Poppins. This section was more informative just showing the user how the type may be used going forward and all the font weights available. Below I have included some images from this section.
We ultimately decided to change the original font of Trebuchet MS for something that we feel to be a little cleaner, however, we noticed that this font is often used among other companies and in the future we may revisit this and update it accordingly.
The final section of the booklet was a breakdown of B2C user persona groups that were previously identified during the feasibility stage of the Cufflink product.
Here we decided to add a few more and expand on them further by breaking down into detail their backgrounds, social lives, hobbies etc.
We also thought that it would be a good idea to include an exercise next to each persona so that if in the future a new marketer would join the team, as a part of their onboarding could get to grips with thinking about how to best target our user personas.
Below I have included a few examples from this section.
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As a result of the rebrand, we needed to also update some of the key documents that we send out to potential clients the first of these was the company one-pager.
This serves as an introduction to the company and what we do along with how it would be beneficial for their business to use Cufflink. We thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to implement some of the new graphical assets as put them to work!
Approaching this task, I took a normal approach a rough wire frame then spent time working with stakeholders to ensure all the relevant information was included. In the end we created three versions to be used interchangeably so see what gets us the best results.
One of the main motivations for the rebrand was that Cufflink would soon be embarking on its first seed funding round and the newc orporate look needed to be succinct across the length of the company.
A core aspect of the funding round was to have a pitchbook that could be sent off to VCs both digitally and in physical print. Again, this was a good time to put our new branding guidelines to the test.
When working on this design I found that the guidelines left me a lot of freedom to experiment with certain aspects of the book for example the tables and bar charts, these weren’t explicitly drawn out as lines in the sand but with using the new colour palette I was able to ensure any new elements that were not previously accounted for could work harmoniously with the rest of the design.
Later in the process, we also decided to create an investor one-pager loosely following the format of the corporate one-pager.
The Book itself was a bigger more informational version of our pitch deck and took the reader on a journey from our humble beginnings right through to a full product explanation, finally, closing with the investment ask and our contact details.
Below I have included some images of the final booklet.
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As a part of the brand refresh, we decided to also update our current stockpile of posters, coasters business cards and roll-up banners in anticipation of future marketing events. Below I have included some of the new additions
Creating these additional assets allowed us to stretch the new brand as far as we could experimenting with how Cufflink would look across a wide spectrum of marketing materials.
Overall, the experience of updating a brand and expanding on the current range of digital assets and supporting collateral has been an enjoyable experience and has allowed me to delve into a new area of design that I had previously not explored.
Through collaboration with a brand identity consultant, I was able to quickly learn new skills and implement the new brand in a matter of weeks and overall received good feedback from my peers and key stakeholders including the co-founders of the company.
Going forward I will be developing the brand further as it grows over the coming months ensuring it stays consistent along the way
Later in the process, we also decided to create an investor one-pager loosely following the format of the corporate one-pager.
If I were to take on this project again I would ensure that key decisions were made earlier on with relevant stake holders to save time in reaching the end goal.
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