Simply Measured
Brand Design
In 2011 I was hired by a small startup that was literally named Untitled Startup. The founders had just come up with a new name for the company—Simply Measured—and one of my first projects was designing the new identity.
Simply Measured was tracking Twitter and Facebook profiles for customers and providing them with spreadsheets containing the posts and tweets they needed. We planned to start making more sophisticated reports and to build new web application that would deliver these reports.
The Chief Product Officer, Aviel had been working on designs for this new product. The primary colors were light gray, red, and blue. He wanted people using the software to feel like it was their own personal data super hero. There was even a first draft of a logo for the company—something to put on the designs where the final logo would go. We dealt with a lot of data and we wanted the identity to reflect that. The placeholder logo in mockups for the web app was basically a bar chart.
That sort of idea made sense, but it’s also kind of tacky and maybe too obvious. I usually try to design logos that will work well in black or a single color in case that’s needed. I also tend to like a mark that will fit decently into a square: something that isn’t too tall or too wide. Finally, I was very much influenced at the time by marks that were mostly flat colors and simple shapes but that showed depth when you look at the whole design.
What is that mark representative of? A letter U? A tulip? Wings? In any case it’s always fascinated me and I love how the four solid areas of color don’t look completely flat once they are together. There’s also something wonderful about the asymmetry of the design. It’s well balanced even as it leans forward.
I started by sketching designs that hinted at data changing over time. Curves. Miniature charts. Eventually I settled on a curving shape with one rise and one fall.
Because I knew I wanted something with more depth, something more 3 dimensional, I started drawing higher fidelity marks and experimenting with colors (talk about why we wanted blue and red?) so I could see the more subtle differences in shades that would give the logo it’s depth.
After drawing a more 3 dimensional shape by hand, I realized it was too obvious. I wanted the actual shapes to be much more subtle. I would probably need the negative space to participate much more. And I needed realistic 3 dimensional shapes that I could simplify instead of starting with simple shapes and trying to make them look 3D.
Once I had a model to work with I had to find the right angle to look at it from. Then I traced over a wireframe image of the model. Then I added color.
