Making the complex simple — revealed

ScaleSec’s brand redesign from conception to implementation

ScaleSec are experts in cloud native architecture & engineering, and compliance services — and a multi-phase project client. They are a Google Cloud Launch Partner and have many high profile clients like VMWare. They blend exacting standards with deep technical capability. Their redesign kickoff was in early April 2019. The first goal, was for the team to be able to attend an industry conference, with a new digital presence, emphasising the company values. An opportunity to present their experience and evolution to peers, partners and potential hires.

There were no restrictions on the design process — (except no images of hackers in hoodies!) ScaleSec were enthusiasts of the Mode2 and DualSpark branding style, and wanted to elevate their own market perception with me leading their experience project.

Discovery and data gathering

An empathetic approach and an experienced understanding of the usage needs gave me a huge head-start to researching and consolidating brand assets, understanding and creating user personas, journey maps, current pain points, and business goals — with assumptions where required. Plus technical discovery to determine systems, data components, integrations, and limitations.

Teams sync collaboratively

The founders of the ScaleSec team are based in the PST time zone, while part of business operations team are in EST, and I work in GMT. This cycle of time zones actually works really well, when the US team was asleep, I was preparing an update and processing their feedback and contributions. We meet online on Zoom video calls and message via Slack to review pre-prepared updates, sent ahead of meetings, and online walk-throughs. Efficient and time-saving, I could convey the presentations I needed and gain feedback in quick-time allowing super-busy folks to begin their day on client sites, prioritising and planning the next session ahead. Sprints are managed through Trello boards, highlighting any blockers and finalising completed tasks. Low fidelity wireflows allowed me to justify each decision and recommend which areas to explore further while simultaneously discarding any unproven branches.

Technology built to scale

As advocates of the Serverless framework, I proposed HUGO for their website redesign — as a “Fast and Flexible Static Site Generator” it’s lightweight, modular and has the perfect security model, served with a continuous integration and development build pipeline to GitHub then S3 buckets to AWS CloudFront. I planned, and hand-coded bespoke layouts, templates, data files, and imagery.

Automation functionality is built-in, adding latest blog and event posts to the homepage and populating their sections, appearing on partner pages with live twitter feeds, lambda contact forms integrate with the CRM, and job-feed APIs populate the latest hiring positions.

Supporting documentation lays out clearly, step-by-step the methods used and processes required to maintain, update and scale at handover.

Development kept in mind our main identified goals: simplified internal maintenance, brand strengthening, showcasing capabilities, improving customer experience, promoting and enhancing partner relationships, clear provision of service offerings (information architecture) and introducing new customers to ScaleSec — attract more traffic to sign up for consultation and workshops, increasing blog & social followers.

Synergy

ScaleSec simply wouldn’t have had time in their schedules to on-board a design agency who wasn’t aware of the tech space they operate in, and the ability to share previous relevant experiences, and employ the current industry trends. While the work was remote, the whole well-connected team “thrive in the great undocumented beyond”, distributed across the US. The innovative edge-of-your-seat tech sector is hugely rewarding to work in — the lean and agile approach requires each individual to deliver work autonomously with positive, collaborative spirit.

I’ve since been increasing the visual identity across all elements including, company presentations, brochures, creating social strategy and campaigns and regular blogging.