I joined Sorted at an exciting time, on the verge of the expansion of their product offering to new markets. To accompany this, they were looking to rebrand themselves away from a strikingly-neon pink and an outdated logomark (both featured below) to something more fitting of a SaaS company.
Work was already underway with an external agency, but I wasn’t convinced the visuals were hitting the mark. Even though the project was nearing to a close, I put forward a proposal to my team that we bring the work in-house and develop the brand ourselves. They agreed, though I was left with a very short time—two days—in which to conceptualise my thoughts and to come up with a pitch of my own.
With motivation more frantic than I’ve probably had in my entire career so far, I rushed to collating competitor branding and what I believed to be best-in-class industry visuals, selecting typefaces, and building moodboards of inspiring work.
A beautifully simple-yet-quirky geometric typeface, Rund, from the foundry Letters From Sweden, won my heart. It was bold and professional enough to represent a thriving tech brand, but had enough character in its terminals to give the brand a subtle playfulness.
Inspired by Rund’s letterforms (and, as many colleagues have since pointed out, Netflix’s Squid Game), I also set up a series of shapes that would give the brand some easy-to-use distinction.
These simpler shapes would add some visual backdrop to the brand, with some slightly less basic ones representing three key product offerings. The idea was for the shapes to connect together to represent the cohesion between the different product combinations, and suitably worked to form the logomark as well.
As well as this, their podcast – Sorted Indie Retail Sessions – got a glow-up too with a new intro animation courtesy of yours truly, with an upbeat soundtrack and some funky visuals.
I refreshed their marketing intro video as well.
After 48 hours of artboards galore (a mess that I won’t be showing off here), I spent the remaining few days of the week pitching to my team, then to the senior leadership, and finally to the CEO.
Thankfully, they all loved it. You can see it live at https://sorted.com/
