Project Showcase – Propel Software
September 19, 2024
Blog Project Showcase : Propel Software A post by: Propel Software: Showcase It’s fun to see your work “in the wild.” Propel Software is an
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How do you elevate a company’s brand? Well, you call me, of course. 😉 Self-aggrandizing aside, I had the opportunity to help Rafay, with their rebrand project. Rafay is an enterprise AI and cloud services company specializing in accelerated computing infrastructure. The Marketing team wanted a rebrand; technically, it’s a brand refresh, but we updated a lot of things nonetheless. Here’s a breakdown of all the projects for this new rebrand project launch.
Rafay was founded in 2017 and has scaled remarkably fast in recent years, forming some recent partnerships with NVIDIA and Cisco, among others. The company has indeed grown, and the opportunities are numerous. So, it’s a perfect opportunity to make some noise with the brand.
The one directive I received from the team was that they wanted to establish the concept of “elevate” as a cornerstone of the rebrand. And don’t touch the logo. But everything else was open for a refresh.
We explored various creative directions, and ultimately, we focused on the concept that shows how Rafay elevates your project. We aimed to find the most effective way to communicate that.
A bit of background on the brand, the CEO had the logo created for the company, and there’s a cool story about it. Rafay is of Arabic origin and means “to elevate” or “to raise.” Therefore, the logo symbolizes elevation, scaffolding, and building toward new heights.
The Rafay “R” logomark, or the “scaffolding” (as it’s named internally), symbolizes building, scaling, and support. While that was the intended meaning, the execution of this idea was not quite clearly communicated.
The idea of how Rafay powers infrastructure led to concepts of structure, architecture, and landmarks. Since Rafay is a global company, landmarks from around the world were an obvious choice.
Capitalizing on the activity of “building”, we’ve broken down the logo and used its triangle shapes as brand elements, as you can see throughout the company’s communications.
The logo mark is the foundation of the brand visuals. I deconstructed the logo and used its triangle shapes as brand elements. I used triangles in progressive transparency, as they elevate from the main logo mark. They float away from the “R” seen below.
We used the logo mark as an anchor for photography mock-ups, hero images in the website and many other uses.
The site was visually considered too dark, and the goal was to brighten it overall. A lot of dark colors and shades were used throughout the site. I chose a brighter color palette and removed all dark colors from the site and the brand.
For the Rafay website and its hero treatments, utilizing the R scaffolding is the key design element throughout the site. The “elevated” triangles seem to invite motion and animation as they drift up and away from the key shape. It’s a nice visual.
We needed visuals of the actual customers in their environment—specifically, the people who work in the trenches of large server systems and cloud storage rooms. The photography conveys that, and what’s nice is that it can scale with any future stock photography.
Clean and clear. The icons showcase a consistent style that relies on line art and color blocking.
I made a silly video about marketing screenshots here. But honestly, you need to market a product—and do so visually as well. If your screenshots look like a developer’s GitHub toolkit, without any style, then building the screens into brand elements helps tell that story. So, remember, product marketers: get your screenshots right, like this.
We created a practical brand library and designed templates in Canva. Since small businesses often can’t afford full-time design staff, Canva offers an affordable way for marketing teams to produce visuals in-house with minimal effort. As a result, Canva templates were the clear choice. Love it or hate it, Canva is here and widely used. With my experience as an in-house designer and leading design teams, I understand how difficult it can be for marketing teams to create visuals on their own.
We explored many ideas during this rebrand, really putting my Midjourney Gen AI skills to the test — and having quite a few laughs along the way. Here are some prompts that didn’t quite hit the mark.
Contact me to see how I can assist your team in building your next brand or marketing project. I’ll ensure we launch on time and within budget, leveraging my experience to make the process smooth and stress-free for you. Contact me to find out how Contact us to find out how.
Creative can be a circus. Let me help.
Cheers
Greg
Idea Circus 💡 🎪
Not “Influencer” social,.. but social enough.
Blog Project Showcase : Propel Software A post by: Propel Software: Showcase It’s fun to see your work “in the wild.” Propel Software is an
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