A successful startup needed to become a brand

When I joined Educative, there was no brand standardization across the branded marketing materials. They had a logo, but its usage was inconsistent and worse, the design failed to even be legible in the many mobile and social environments it needed to appear in. My first order of business was to update the mark and provide a set of design guidelines and distribute them across our many offices, mostly in remote locations. The new mark was built on the ‘command line prompt’ that every developer writes code in. This simplified design allowed even the smallest usage (favicon) to visually stand out. I standardized the colors we used and built design templates for social media managers to create their own work within the guidelines. Almost overnight, all of the work being created was in alignment.

BRAND DESIGN / GUIDELINES:

MARKETING/CONTENT:

BRAND EXPERIENCE (UX):
I led the design for our full suite of email templates using Hubspot to design them. I collaborated with our content writing team and my Head of Growth to optimize each week, and use our learning to improve open rates and click-throughs.

• Email Lengths: Our developer audience loved to consume content. Brevity didn’t matter, in fact, longer writing extended interactions.
• Diagrams Rule: We honed are graphics to explain complex systems related to our dev courses. They always kept user interest and were shared across social.
• Connecting the dots: Using each email to explain a course in real-world values, as well as showing how it fit within our greater ecosystem of courses, really drove KPIs.