SIMPLY MEASURED BRANDING, GRAPHIC DESIGN, WEB DESIGN • 2015
Designing at a fun, fast-paced, creative start up
It feels like a blur when I reflect on the almost three years I spent as a designer for the social media analytics startup Simply Measured, but it was such a fun experience. The fast-paced nature of the business gave me the opportunity to work on a wide range of design projects, get involved in new creative fields like UX/UI, and ultimately shape me as a designer.
Building the brand
There was never a dull moment working for a successful startup. As design lead, I was responsible for the quality and delivery of all design output - including overseeing a small team of freelance designers. The work encompassed establishing brand guidelines, launching a website redesign, creating digital advertising, photography, creating templates and design systems, infographics, and much more.
Established a brand style guide that helped shape the identity of our marketing materials.
To help ensure consistency and keep up with the speed to market, I built many design templates and guidelines to help us scale.
I helped define the strategy, user experience, and visual design for our website redeisgn.
Design played a key role in many aspects of the business so I learned quickly to collaborate across teams and departments.
Branding
The Simply Measured identity was designed to reflect the vibrant intelligent analytics company we were. While remaining flexible to used our social media analytics platform to communicate our brand message. This approach allowed the design to reflect the audience or social tool we were marketing.
Marketing Materials
Simply Measured lead the way in communicating the "how-to" guides and examples for anything social media related. We built tons of physical and digital marketing campaigns showcasing our product and the success stories it enabled.
Website Redesign
In an effort to better reflect our positioning as a company we launched a massive website redesign. Working with an external agency, I helped lead the creative direction and visual design for the new website.
To support the new website I built wireframes to conduct user research with, designed a UI kit, brand guidelines, and shot all-new photography and video for many of the ancillary pages.
Digital Advertising
As a social media startup, we were no stranger to advertising on social. We ran countless campaigns that highlighted both our product and the social media industry as a whole. It was important for these ads to feel on brand for Simply Measured, but also to be adaptable enough to support the tone and message we were going to market with.
Presentations
Creating presentation templates was another way the Simply Measured brand came to life. These ranged from sales decks to event templates to executive pitch decks. As a startup these were often key moments to introduce customers to our brand and tell our story.
Photography
I was able to bring my eye for photography to help Simply Measured move beyond using stock imagery in a lot of our marketing assets. I also helped art direct and photograph photoshoots for company profiles, internal employee headshots, and a product image library for our website redesign.
Iconography
Reinforcing our brand's goal to feel authentic we developed a style of iconography that felt like it mirrored the analytics industry while also being more playful in their appearance. The thick lines and fill colors allowed these icons to work across all our marketing materials.
Infographics
One of the more fun parts of the job was having an amazing supply of data. These were often created around current events like sports, pop culture, or world events that generated a lot of buzz on Twitter or Facebook. Using visual storytelling helped to humanize our product and connect our audience to the data.
Lessons Learned
BUILD A GREAT CULTURE
The people who worked at Simply Measured were some of the best and brightest I've had the chance to meet. We built a great product and platform and had an even better time doing so. Even though the work was tough at times, we always had fun doing it.
QUALITY > QUANTITY
There were several projects that stand out above the rest because we took the time to get them right. Even though working smart and shipping often is a part of the startup experience, some of the most creative work came when we put extra time and attention into the craft.
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