As a rapidly growing software company that had recently acquired a B2C app (Influenster) and a social commerce platform (Curalate), it was time to rebrand the company logo and overall aesthetic.
I joined the company shortly after the rebrand was completed, and there was still quite a lot of work needed to evolve the new logo and aesthetic into a scalable brand system.
EVALUATION:
The studio team conducted stakeholder interviews and heuristic evaluation of the current system. After synthesizing our findings, we identified these key pain points:
1. Color combinations did not meet ADA accessibility standards.
2. Aesthetic was too corporate.
3. Self-service templates were difficult for non-designers to use.
4. Users don't know where to go to find brand assets
5. Brand guidelines unclear, especially around version control.
1. Color combinations did not meet ADA accessibility standards.
2. Aesthetic was too corporate.
3. Self-service templates were difficult for non-designers to use.
4. Users don't know where to go to find brand assets
5. Brand guidelines unclear, especially around version control.
ROADMAP:
We had a lot of work to do! So I built a roadmap to keep us on track.
SOLUTIONS:
Color combinations did not meet ADA accessibility standards. Bazaarvoice's color palette uses 4 main colors: Bazaarvoice Blue, Connecting Purple, Radical Red, and Transparent Green,. While the first 3 colors are accessible when used for type against a white background, we found that Transparent Green was not accessible. 
2. Aesthetic was too corporate. The old Bazaarvoice was known for Ratings & Reviews, but the new and future Bazaarvoice is a leader in the social commerce space. Therefore, the brand aesthetic needed to evolve to reflect the social space, which is more visual and more vibrant.
3. Self-service templates were difficult for non-designers to use. At Bazaarvoice, the business model trusts employees to own the designs of the visuals used for their client communications, and internal presentations. The design team provides templates that empowers employees to create their own designs. These templates were mostly successful, but there were certain elements that were too difficult for non-designers to update, including: rectangles with rounded corners, fonts, and color selection.
At this point, we had achieved the first 2 stages of our roadmap. We rolled out the brand updates to the company in the form of a PDF on our company Confluence page.
NEXT STEPS:
The PDF format is not an ideal or a permanent format for our final brand experience. For multiple reasons:• It isn't dynamic, and will result in version-control issues when we make updates
• It is difficult to manage permissions when shared with external partners and vendors
• No data analytics on the most-used assets (which means we aren't able to learn and improve the experience)
For all of these reasons, I am currently engaged in the next stage of our roadmap, exploring the best solution for our centralized brand experience hub. I will update this page as soon as the solution is determined.