Humanizing a Brand
BombBomb has always believed in the power of personal video communication in business, so in 2020 we felt it imperative to assess our company identity and consider how to best represent the heart-beat of our company to the market.
With a comprehensive strategic process, it was clear that we were about one thing—enabling human-centered communication in business—and this positioning would quickly put our brand at the forefront of our first initiative to bring these new ideas to life.
As a team, we had been evolving our current look for four years off of inherited styles. It was not a look I was profoundly proud of (shown below), but we had worked hard on it and it was performing. I wanted a complete rebrand as much as anyone else, but knew it was imperative not to act on vanity or opportunity, but truly assess the need for change and ensure complete buy-in to the design investment that lay ahead.
2019 Brand Evolution
We put together customer panels and user testing to understand our current brand’s performance in communicating human-centricity and developing trust up-market. It became apparent we had the opportunity to mature our look and become a truly human-centered brand by focusing on changes across our system from photography to palette. Informed by the data, leadership was ready for a new look and we were off—tasked to increase our distinction, build our perception and communicate our refined human focus.
Read about Designing with Data
By conducting multiple brand strategy sessions with leadership, we narrowed our sights on visually achieving ‘Human realism that drives relational trust’ and aimed to create core visual characteristics that delivered on the following principles:
Authentic business people “like you” that are finding success through relationship.
Human movement and patterns that express connection & communication.
Realism and hyper-legibility that create reliability & transparency.
Product capabilities that lead to better business connection & outcomes.
Read about Building a Creative Backbone
As a company, there is one thing that we know and its that the human face is powerful. With this in mind, photography became a pivotal asset to develop the authenticity we needed to achieve. So we directed and produced a commercial photoshoot, casting diverse and relatable models in our customer profile, aiming to put their personalities on display. We focused on capturing the expressions and gestures that we knew would pull our viewers in and draw on the human connection that fueled our product.
Internally directed brand photoshoot
Generating a human experience in the tonality of our brand became our next focus. When we looked at our visual patterns, it was important to consider how to integrate the movement and depth characteristic of relationships and engagement. We decided on abstract human forms that flowed and interacted across the page, mimicking the patterns of communication and connection. We then further enhanced the experience by integrating gradients and softer hues to give the brand a more natural feel.
Most important to our endeavor to deliver on a human experience, we needed to increase the literal usability of our brand. Our previous style had been plagued with accessibility issues and it was an area we needed to address. By developing a high contrast, interchangeable palette that leveraged the equity of our previous colors, we were able to pass all accessibility requirements and maintain our distinction in the competitive landscape. We then followed suit with our type choice, and landed on a font family that delivered equal levels of clarity, developed specifically for legibility with optimized sizing for all our uses.
2022 Rebranded Homepage
2022 Brand Design System
After a year of consideration, work, testing and rework, it is a thrill to see the brand live and in use, connecting with our customers and clearly defining our unique position in the market. Through strategic consideration, our brand story came to life and we’ve already seen a 3x increase in prospects as it connects with like-minded customers, driving trust and affinity while showcasing the value of the product we offer.