Brand Design | System Scale

Indeed decided it was time for a full brand lift. I had the honor of being part of the small but mighty team that successfully designed their new identity.

Our team was known as Brand Systems and I was brought in to both redesign all brand assets and evalute opportunities for motion. This work entailed audits, prototypes, guidance, and distribution. I took lead on iconography and illustrations as well, establishing new styles and incorporating other brand assets like color and typography. When it was all said and done, we enabled the first ever company-wide mandate to move all product experiences into this new identity.

Brand Range

The identity work updated everything except the logo (womp). As should be the case will all brands, accessibility was a forefront objective in our discovery. Color theory was a topic of huge discussion, especially as we took aim at misleading metrics because of hot colored buttons. We also prioritized humanizing the job discovery experience, with illustrations and photography taking the lead. As most tech companies succumb to the “blue people” approach, we we went all in to show off what expressive design could really feel like. A custom typeface was developed to get us out of system stagnation and led us to using content in a much more graphical way. Icons took on a functional role to act as support and let illustrations shine. Motion was my bread and butter, so scroll further to see how that system was established.

Motion for Indeed

Outside of the most basic interaction states, Indeed lacked clear direciton on why, how, when, and where motion mattered within their product space. To garner user trust while maintaining accessiblity, I developed a foundational system that enabled support throughout the entire job seeker and employer journey.

After looking through a large part of the product space, I created core motion states that could estabilish support for any of Indeed’s needs.

Scale: enables focus and draws awareness to a useful feature
Segment: helps to reveal or remove in order to create space for information
Slide: educates by demonstrating spatial awareness to users

Using those core states, teams could begin to identify their moment for motion. These five moments cover the most supportive needs. They may appear obvious, but that’s because they aren’t supposed to be overly complex. They allow for a way to establish a structure of what needs motion and how it gets it.

To demonstrate real usage, I developed an example starter sheet so teams could quickly figure out their page formula and begin proposing motion within their prototypes. As stakeholders began asking for validation, designers and engineers could quickly show proof behind their decisions.

Motion Guidance

Choreography and timing played a critical role in how components and features presented themselves. It was important to establish both functional and expressive moments to ensure the motion felt right and could easily be scanned. This also included a common axis for directional motion and layer depth.

Choreographed moments were designed with a range of easing and duration properties.

Motion in Product

Indeed.Design

We also built a website dedictated to this work. See more of it here at indeed.design.

I contributed a few articles as well: