Design is one of the most important pillars of brand communication. Brands set themselves apart from the competition, convey values, emotions, and trustworthiness and establish the basis for the user experience.

Many companies invest in design only at the beginning of the process to create a logo and colour palette. But it is a process of constant improvement because neither the market environment nor the user stays the same over time.

Freelance marketplace company Workana is currently undergoing a visual makeover, and the duo leading the project, Pablo Scillia and Augustin Boaretto, describes the process and share their insights.

Why is a brand’s visual identity important?

Pablo Scillia: A brand’s visual identity is a fundamental part of its positioning in the market, its communication style and the user experience (UX) because it’s through this that it creates a bond with the target audience.

The colours, typography, graphic elements and other variables that identify a brand must broadcast a message congruent with the company and the user’s needs.

Agustín Boaretto: A brand’s visual identity is a visual system that amplifies its recognition. Examples of this are two of the most recognised brands in the world: Coca-Cola and Apple.

One sees the Coca-Cola red and immediately knows what it is about. It is the same with Apple’s clean and balanced visual aesthetic that can be seen in every detail, including the use of space between the text in the packaging.

How often should a brand work on its visual identity?

Boaretto: A lot of factors can influence this but there are two key points that determine when it is time to rethink a brand’s visual system:

• User feedback: Learn what people think about visual communication, what they expect, what the results consistently are and are not, and what they feel comfortable with. If the responses are ambiguous or not very positive, it’s time to rethink how we communicate.
• Advances in visual communication: Visual communication is a process of constant iteration and organic advances that simplify and universalise processes and messages. If a visual system is no longer simple and understandable for the current times, it’s time to rethink it.

Why is Workana doing this now?

Scillia: Workana has created a place designed for freelancers and clients to work together, and our visual identity and UX design are based on creating trust, professionalism and newness.

After working with the same user interface (UI) for three years, we realised it was time for an upgrade to keep ourselves competitive.

Boaretto: Workana is a dynamic company, adding new features and tools in order to improve the services to freelancers and clients. It created a series of different graphic elements over time that began to diverge.

It is a natural process any fast growing company experiences, and it can be difficult to holistically see how we are communicating with the client in every area on a day-to-day basis. It was time to simplify and unify our visual system to improve the user experience on the platform.

What is the process of rethinking a brand’s visual identity like?
Scillia: Redesigning a platform’s UI is complicated. It can take a lot of time and requires all team members to identify the same variables and strive for the same objectives.

We asked ourselves, “Where do we want to be within three or five years?” and “How can we approach users; how do we want them to remember us?”

We began to work on a new typography and colour scheme that helped the readability on mobile devices and explored ideas to create a homogeneous artistic direction that would provide rapidly growing business units particular identities.

We generated quick tests to see how the changes we had in mind would impact the current flows so we could visualise the final results.

And thanks to our development architecture, we were able to start visualising the final code and determine whether or not this project would be feasible.

Boaretto: We can outline the process thus:

• Identify and replace: Find existing errors, different systems that could coexist in visual communication, the good and the bad, and what would be good to discuss, modify or eliminate. We must look at a visual system with a critical eye, and that is when little inconsistencies can surface.
• Establishing scope: It is important to understand what to improve in a rebranding process. Understanding the scope of these improvements and having a clear objective is important for the next steps.
• Gather information: Knowing what users think is important for a rebranding process. We can conduct surveys that tell us what users expect from our brand and learn about advances in visual communication systems.
• Search for the visual system: Having figured out what we needed and collected information from users, it was time to brainstorm solutions with different methods and conduct low-level tests through wireframes and mock-ups to give us an idea of whether or not our visual system will work.
• Armed with a visual system: After establishing the direction, the visual system must be armed with all the basic and common elements first in order to apply the system to all design and communications later.
• Application: At this stage, all the high-quality designs have been updated with the newly developed visual system.
• Quality testing: If quality control is conducted throughout the whole process, once the visual system update is finalised, we check with the design team and other departments to make sure everything works properly and correct any inconsistencies (at this point they should be minimal).
• Benefits: It is important to tell users what changes have been made and why to make them part of the new and improved story we are telling in search of a better final experience.

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