Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with the very nice people at Geckoboard to update their company branding and design a new responsive marketing website. The process started when I met up with the guys in their London office to find out more about the company ethos, their ideas for the redesign and get to know them all a little better.
During my conversations with Paul (CEO and Co-Founder) and Pete (Lead Designer) the overall goal for the redesign became clear. We wanted to keep things as simple as possible, reflecting what Geckoboard is all about - displaying vital information and metrics in a beautiful and instantly understandable way. We decided that using photography to show Geckoboard dashboards being used by different types of users, in various situations, along with a simple graphic approach would be the ideal way to go.
Branding
I started the process by coming up with a number of different logo options, that we in the end ditched for a more simple approach that would reflect the simplicity of Geckoboard as a whole. I updated the brand colours by pairing the already recognisable 'Geckoboard green', with a dark grey/blue tone. We found that this worked really well alongside imagery of Geckoboard dashboards in real world situations.
I introduced the use of the serif typeface Chaparral Pro, to compliment the bold but friendly sans-serif Brandon Grotesque used for headings, making the brand feel slightly more sophisticated while not sacrificing its tech startup roots. I wanted to tread the line between professional, warm and chatty. I think this combination of fonts does a great job of that. Especially Brandon Grotesque, at light weights it is professional and looks really well balanced. At heavier weights it has a nice fun ‘roundness’ to it.
Illustration style
Geckoboard is all about displaying metrics and information in the most easily understandable way possible, very often in the form of graphs and display graphics. Taking inspiration from this idea I created a supporting line illustration style that is distinctive and has a slight echo of line graphs and infographics.
Marketing website
The new website is responsive, meaning that it automatically re-aligns itself to work across any browser size and on different devices. Geckoboard users view their dashboards across multiple devices, from their phone or tablet, desktop monitor or widescreen TV. The marketing website needed to reflect this. A lot of effort went into working out how the design could change and adapt depending on the device it is viewed on.
The final branding, marketing site and illustration style is something I'm really proud of and will hopefully serve to further enhance Geckoboard's reputation as a leader in their field.
I'm really looking forward to working with the guys again in the future to further evolve the styles we have created here.
About Oli
Oli Lisher is a freelance web designer and illustrator based in the UK. See more of his work at www.lisher.net
