Directly desired an elevated brand that would increase their market visibility and help them stand out from the competition. They strived for a fresh, modern, abstract design that would capture their prospective clients' attention using custom illustrations that could easily be understood.
While Directly’s color palette of yellow and black was a bold departure from the common use of greens and blues within the customer experience (CX) and AI industries, the overbearing use of color, stark contrast, and highly generic photography pushed them even further away from their target audience. Dreaming of going from clunky and heavy, to modern and clean, they were ready to break free from the mundane.
My first step involved outlining the key brand attributes: identifying Directly as a technology company with a flexible, confident, knowledgeable, and authentic personality, and creating each new piece with intention and meaning. The new brand design concept explored how to incorporate geometric shapes to quickly convey the difference between the Platform (cube) and Expert Network (triangle). To avoid additional photo licensing fees and provide the website with a fresh look, I created custom illustrations using the new geometric shapes to clearly define the various platform solutions. To differentiate the five new APIs and the tasks that they completed, I added accent colors!
All photography was removed from the brand imagery and replaced with new custom illustrations that easily conveyed complex technological processes, in a simple way. To further create a more approachable demeanor, the black elements were subdued, and yellow and white were transitioned to the primary colors for the brand. The new color palette was tested and applied to each of the 5 APIS to easily differentiate them for buyers, while geometric shapes were applied to the platform and Expert Network – a cube now symbolizes the Directly platform and triangles the Expert Network.
The entire rebrand process took 3 months. The brand direction is now crisp, modern, and intentional.
