Brand Refresh
Spot AI was growing. We needed a way to punch above our weight and target larger customers as we moved upmarket. Upleveling our brand presence and presenting Spot as a trusted and premium player in the market was going to be important in enabling us to do this.
The goal was not to overhaul the Spot AI brand, but rather elevate the foundations we had in place. So this wasn’t about redesigning our logo or rewriting our messaging frameworks. Instead — I sought alignment with the founding team, recalibrated our existing brand values and crystallized the project brief. I hired and partnered with an external agency to build refresh guidelines on an 8–10 week timeframe.
Objective: Present Spot AI as a trusted and premium player in the market, differentiate from competitors, attract larger customers
Strategy: Uplevel the way we present ourselves across assets to feel more premium while still conveying value, champion the customer
Brand attributes: Innovative, intelligent, human
Build perception that Spot is: Premium, trusted, secure
Tactics: Refresh visual brand and assets
Elements of the refresh:
Retain Spot AI logo form, update color only to monochromatic
Typography that feels modern and innovative, yet human and approachable
Build upon Spot blue, expand color palette to create a more dynamic visual system, and enable color recognition for future product offerings
Elevate product dashboard:
1) Create “moments” in which a visitor sees one or more modals, each highlighting a specific feature
2) Premium UI, with white “frosted glass” and subtle levels of transparency
Grid made up of nodes and lines creates the fabric of the Video Intelligence story
Gradient and curves visual system represents the idea of movement. Movement of people, vehicles and things. Movement of video. Movement to action. Movement from video security to Video Intelligence.
White space with infusion of bold, vibrant color contained within hard, curved edges
Champion the customer: UI layered in front of and behind masked customer imagery with some environment present
Color palette: Combination of warm and cool tones represent the people and industries we serve (warm) and the AI technology that powers our product (cool). Tertiary palette used to present individual features/feature categories
More video (we fundamentally believed we were a video company)
guidelines
spot.ai Homepage – desktop above the fold mockup
Considerations: Appeal to multiple P1 industries | Convey premium | Exude innovative, intelligent, human
corporate overview – Google Slides
My role / Creative Director
Hired and partnered with design agency for production of refresh guidelines on an 8–10 week timeline
Aligned executives on new visual direction
Created launch plan, which involved a phased approach based on limited resources
Built roadmap for web refresh and led Senior Designer on a systems approach
Managed reveal of brand refresh
What went well/
Major internal morale boost – Spotan excitement around the new look and feel was palpable
Positive feedback from existing customers
learnings /
Hiring: The design agency’s working model was rigid and in hindsight, probably not the right fit for a high growth tech startup. Working models should clearly align prior to initiating an agency engagement.
Phased brand launch: With competing and ever-evolving priorities, I was unable to launch a cohesive refresh across touchpoints. While this is not the ideal path, I had to consider what was feasible, and it was clear to me that a phased launch was exactly that. Brand can be messy at times, and that is okay. We’re in it for the long game!