PROJECT:
BRand Strategy & Design
CONVERGENCE DESIGN LAB
Partner: Convergence Design Lab
Project Services:
- Design Strategy
- Brand Design
- Web UX/UI Design
"How can we present ourselves as more sophisticated, unique, and creative?"
When Convergence Design Lab first approached Polyrhythmic, they were already in a website redesign process when they realized that much of their messaging and positioning needed to be supported by a design strategy and better visual narrative.
The brand had matured over the years and outgrew the visual narrative which focused primarily on youth and their learning environment. Their intended audiences are key decision makers in learning spaces who were more interested in smart, creative, and innovative partnerships and approaches to learning design.
Convergence also produces a number of assets and reports from their research and needed a design system to help them effectively and efficiently produce documents that are aligned with their visual identity.
Solution
After a series of interactive workshops on creative direction, it was clear that Convergence was looking to simplify their identity while creating a fresh and unexpecting style for an agency working in the learning design space.
LOGO Design
Rather than completely departing from their logo, my approach was to refine and create a more intentional narrative with their mark. The venn diagram creates a subtle representation of the acronyms CDL.
Black was used to emphasize boldness, purple to represent the unknown, and the red as an activating color when two (or more) ideas converge.
Other vibrant colors were added to their pallet and paired with geometric shapes and patterns to help create more controlled energy to their visual presence.
Design concepts pushed the thinking about how to communicate who they are, what they do, and more importantly how they work with partners and clients in a creative, engaging, and unique way.
Art direction and design production was assisted by Meredith Montgomery of Oxbow Collective.
Custom Icon Library
The scope of work also included exploring ideas for custom icons to help mark key ideas in their work — especially with their analysis and reports. It also needed to scale over time.
I introduced a set of “building blocks” and guidelines for their custom icon library based on the fundamental shapes of their logo. This allowed myself and future designers to be creative, playful, and flexible when scaling and adding to the icon library.
A set of featured icons were created to represent key ideas and concepts in their work. A secondary icon set was created to help mark breaks in sub ideas for written reports and possibly for other assets. Both sets are represented below.
The above image is a use case example of the custom icons in context of a report.
Case Studies
POLYRHYTHMIC SERVICES
POLYRHYTHMIC SERVICES
SEE CHICAGO DANCE
SEE CHICAGO DANCE
