- CASE STUDY -

OrganizationView & Workometry rebrand

I completely redesigned the brand identities, websites and marketing material for a pair of pioneering Swiss HR people analytics companies.

Client: Organization View (Switzerland).
Designed remotely from Perth, Australia, 2017-2018.
View the OrganizationView website here, and Workometry website here.

About the project

OrganizationView is a small people analytics practice based in St. Moritz, Switzerland. They help large companies collect and analyse data to develop a productive and nimble workforce - where management and employees work together to deliver sustainable performance.

Workometry is their flagship employee survey software product. With a focus on open-ended questions, it utilises sophisticated algorithms to deliver more value to clients than traditional survey solutions.

The small team combines expertise in HR and data science. They have won a number of industry awards, and are increasingly gaining recognition as a leader in their field. I have been working with them for a number of years on smaller projects, and was approached to redesign their branding, website and stationery in 2017.

The primary goals for the new and improved websites were to help promote their services, increase sign up of new clients, and modernise their online presence. They also wished to reposition Workometry to be more of a separate entity. Their existing HR/analytics blog is widely read, and we wanted to really push that as a point of emphasis. Visitors are encouraged to sign up to their weekly newsletter on both sites, which acts as a crucial sales funnel.

My role

Over the preceding two years I had developed a great working relationship with the founders. They had a clear vision of the visual direction they wanted to pursue, and we had a number of productive calls to further clarify their thinking into a detailed design brief.

Although they had clear ideas about the general look they wanted, I was given a large amount of freedom to see where the creative process took me. As the sole design resource, I created detailed wireframes for the websites, designed the logos, chose colour schemes and typography, and developed a visual language to be applied across print and digital. I built each of the websites using Squarespace, using some CSS tweaks to modify certain aspects of the sites.

Challenges

One of the challenges we identified early was how to successfully create cohesive visual identities for the parent company (OrganizationView) and their main product (Workometry). The key was to have a clear distinction between the two logos - but to keep them obviously part of the same ‘family’. I put together a research document (see above) to see how other businesses designed a family of brands, utilising different colours, font styles, and icons to identify each sub-brand.

Before the redesign, Workometry was a single page on the main OrganizationView site - rather than a stand-alone website. For the redesign, it was decided it was best to split them into two separate websites with unique urls. To start the project, I designed wireframes (see below) to ascertain which content we wanted to have on each site, as well as working out how each site would reference and link to the other. This really helped the client visualise the structure of the two sites - as it was a big decision to split them up.

My approach

After several initial calls to establish a solid design brief, I began searching for suitable design inspiration. Being based in Switzerland, the client wanted the branding and imagery in the website to pay homage to classic Swiss design. The clean, minimal aesthetics of Swiss design perfectly suits the company’s analytical, logical approach to problem solving. The client and I shared images of old posters, stationery and logos (see above) which we thought could help inform our visual approach.

The original logos used a series of interconnected circles, which had a tech/science feel to them. We agreed to pursue this as one possible design direction, as well as a cleaner, stripped-back, Swiss-style approach. After viewing the initial concepts, the client gravitated towards the cleaner Swiss style. See above some snippets showing initial exploratory sketches, through to concept ideation, and the final designs.

The final logo designs have a very minimalist aesthetic, using bold sans-serif typography with some subtle alterations. The selective use of colour draws visual attention to one part of the logotype - this is symbolic of how the company takes huge amounts of data, then distills it into key insights. The use of different shades of blue for the two logos help create visual distinction, whilst keeping them clearly part of the same family. Blue was chosen to retain a visual link to the original branding.

One of the most important parts of the two sites was the Insights blog (see above) on the OrganizatioView site. It has a large following, and we wished it to be a prominent feature. A strong graphic style based on classic Swiss design (with a modern twist) was developed for all of the article cover images. The article images tend towards the abstract, rather than always showing a literal interpretation of the article content.

The Workometry site focuses on the 6 core topics displayed above. Each topic area will link through to case studies which focus on their given topic, as well as cross-linking back to any articles on the OrganizationView site. Once again, the same colour palette and graphic style is retained.

Final thoughts

This has been one of the most satisfying design projects I have undertaken in my career. I really admire the work that they do, and their Swiss-design-focused inspiration for the brief was a designer’s dream!

The client has expressed to me how happy they are with their new branding and online presence. It will allow them to really push the business forward and pursue new customers with confidence. The new UX of the websites really focuses the user’s attention on the key calls-to-actions such as signing up to their newsletter, the contact page, and arranging a free demo of their software.

It presented some very real challenges both in terms of how to split up the two website’s content, and also how to create two brand identities which complement each other, and are clearly part of a linked visual identity. It was a really collaborative process from start to finish, and at times each of us pushed back and challenged the other’s view point. This never created friction, but only helped lead to better outcomes.

Having the mutual trust which we’ve developed over time really helped empower me to push the boundaries and come up with a finished product that I am very proud of. The visual style now established is very flexible and will continue to be rolled out across other touch points. We plan to continue working together on future endeavours.