At 15 years in, Zendesk was fighting for distinction in a sea of competitors within the CX space. Various companies had "adopted" several aspects of our unique brand language, which diluted its impact over time. Transformational change within the company and the broader CX industry signaled it was long time to refresh our brand positioning, messaging and visual look and feel. In order to effectively reach our audience and grow the business, a new mature and confident brand expression would decisively increase our brand distinction and demonstrate market leadership.
The design criteria for the brand refresh project involved several considerations. The new brand expression had to be distinct enough to stand out within a crowded market and redefine what CX leadership should look like. The next quality we sought after was timelessness. While the new brand system needed to feel current, it also needed to be long-lasting and flexible enough to endure continual change. We considered practicality and equity—while we as a creative team are passionate about making beautiful things, beauty has little purpose in a brand system if it can’t easily be executed or extended upon, or if the end results aren’t accessible to all.
The preliminary work on this project began in the form of collaborative cross-functional workshops, which involved nearly the entire Creative Team at Zendesk. The primary objective of these workshops was to focus on individual design elements and narrative ideas, as well as audit where our current branding was falling short and no longer delivering on its intentions. We dove into color theory and psychology, serif vs. sans serif typography, the impact of motion and animation on the brand experience, how various approaches to illustration, blockframes, and photography are interpreted, among many other facets of branding. These initial workshops succeeded in aligning the entire team on the key objectives and touchpoint requirements of the brand, and also contributed to a wealth of initial inspiration for the upcoming concept and design phases to follow.
To kickstart creative direction, we defined new brand attributes: distilled, confident, generous, and fresh. These attributes became the lens through which we judged our work. Our team iterated, shifted, and evolved our design experiments to align with these attributes. The result is an integrated, harmonious brand expression that we feel confident is true to the Zendesk brand. Distilling our color palette made way for vibrant and expressive new imagery, while incorporating a serif typeface into our type stack immediately elevated our newly matured and confident voice and tone. Minimalism and restraint played an enormous role in our design approach to layouts, as well as a concern for representation and inclusion within our imagery system.
This 18-month initiative resulted in an evocative brand identity foundation that speaks to where we are as a company as well as where we’re headed. Our voice and tone has been refined to prioritize clarity of message, through a caring yet opinionated lens. The resulting visual brand expression draws from the quiet confidence and minimalism of editorial design, portraying a timeless sense of place while elevating stories with simplicity and creativity. Our adventurous new color palette harnesses jewel tones that effortlessly differentiate our brand from the typically blue and green-saturated tech world we exist within, and our uniquely handcrafted house illustration style provides organic, humanistic warmth for additional distinction within this space. Our photography documents moments that speak directly to our audience by capturing both the ideal and realistic state of CX. Our motion system and approach to film-based storytelling enables us to present technical, complex subject matter in a way that is both elegant and easy to understand, delivering on our brand promise to simplify the complex. And even with all of this, we as a team are just getting started. We’ve set the stage for a brand system that will be easy and engaging to extend upon, which sets up our team and company for success moving forward.
I’m unbelievably proud of our in-house team who came together across the globe to make this happen. We even netted an RGD Branding Award and a Silver World Brand Design Society award for this refresh project, which means we must be doing something right.
Awards
World Brand Design Society
Identity: Brand Redesign - SILVER
Illustration: Identity - SILVER
Typography: Graphic Design - COMMENDED
Registration of Graphic Designers
Integrated Awards: Branding Identity - Rebrand/Refresh
Credits
VP of Creative: Erin Pinkley
ECDs: Betsy (Filson) Field, Olivia Kingsley
ACD: Tim Lampe
Sr Designers: Faustine Gheno, Rachel Frankel, Clark Hubert Guy
Illustration Lead: Olenka Malarecka
Photo Lead: Marta Dymek
Principal Copywriter: Diana Wynne
Sr Copywriters: Raven Wright, Julia Oller, Kendrick Hammond
Brand Systems: Cristina Mendoza Magari, Arienne Gagui
Producers: Caty Chung, Renae Vespremi, Kevin Tsukii, Anna Cirera, MacKenzie Covington, Jordyn Fields, Beryl Baker
Digital: Kristina Alford, Adam Chung, Silvana Yaneva
Motion/Video: Mary Vertulfo, Victor Hugo Duran, Colin Thomas, Tori Cincotta, Monica Yap
Iconography: Laura Bohill
