Gearset Brand
Project
My Role
Software
Date
Brand identity, Illustration, Design
Illustrator, Designer
Illustrator, Sketch
2021-Now
One of my first projects when joining Gearset was to help develop the illustration style to go with the upcoming rebrand, along with figuring out how to utilise them in our digital and print collateral. Our creative director had made some headway on it, with initial drafts in place and the beginnings of a line-art, character driven style.
The idea was to have the characters built geometrically, with them comprised entirely of circles and rounded corners. This proved to be a little too limiting so the essence of the idea was kept, but I created a less strict set of rules whereby the illustrations were still built on rounded shapes, but with more freedom. During the process, I sought to develop the style further so that it was easily replicated by the other designers in our team and could be broadly applied when needed.
Initial development & personas
We knew that our illustration style would be a core component of the brand’s visual identity going forward, being used across every single vertical. There was a sense that we needed to bridge the gap between friendliness and a more corporate look, so I developed the line-art style as it’s well-utilised to simplify complex concepts and reads as more mature compared to flat, vector styles. It also conveys simplicity and clarity, which was paramount given how sophisticated Gearset’s product is. Because the characters themselves read as more affable, we shifted these for use in e-books, our careers site, blog posts, and for events that we felt required some personality. For more general asset use across the site, it was important that the style was consistent and easily-recognisable which the line art allowed for, along with considerable versatility regarding our brand colours.
With so many roles across the ecosystem within which Gearset exists, it was important that we were able to represent all of them with the characters. This also worked to represent individuals aspects of Gearset’s platform.
Animation and videos
Another consideration was how the visual identity would work in animation, as this was something we knew would come down the line. The simplicity and limited use of colours lends itself well to simple animations that can be used as part of informational videos, without detracting too much from the messages. This was a balance were always conscious of during the development of the brand: how would it work supplementing the design, and not existing independently? It was precarious, and has taken fine-tuning.
Further development and contextual use
With a more solidified idea of the illustration style, it allowed me to create a large suite of assets accessible to the wider company, and for use in the actual Gearset app and across promotional assets. This allowed for better unification across the entirety of our visuals and ensured greater consistency throughout our social media making us easily identifiable within the ecosystem.
Having built up brand awareness in the ecosystem, it was time to continue building it up in the local Cambridge area, driving attention towards the company in a very tech-centric location. We opted to utilise the brand yellow for physical advertisements, feeling that it stood out against other corporate advertisements and other companies in our ecosystem and would help create a connection when seeing more than one advertisement.
Editorials and blogs
With often quite literal representations of our product found throughout our webpage, the blogs afforded me an opportunity to explore and expand our visual language, discovering new ways to showcase Gearset's offerings.
Extensions of the brand
Social media is such a core part of any modern business, allowing us unbridled access to the community and giving us multiple platforms to advertise our services and content. With a tool as technical as Gearset, it’s important that we’re able to provide proper training for users, regularly doing webinars, other online events and even podcasts which we advertise across multiple channels. Even off-shoots of the brand, like the podcast, needed to look distinctly Gearset so that they were clearly visually linked and anybody seeing the ad would instinctually connect them even without the presence of the logo.
