Illustration Archives · Kari Kay | Product Design Meets Brand Strategy

Lean Design for Startups

A startup for startups, Lean Design teaches entrepreneurs the importance of clarifying their message from day one and using their limited resources to their full potential.

SERVICES
Product Validation, Branding, Identity, Website Design, Copywriting, Printed and Digital Marketing Collateral

PROJECT TYPE
Branding, Visual Identity Design, Website Design, Marketing Collateral, Educational Course Design

Lean Design for Startups is one of our Founder's favorite pet projects. After helping dozens of startups launch and iterate on their products, Kari saw how a lack of understanding about the creative process was costing entrepreneurs precious time and unnecessary heartache.

Kari developed the Lean Design™ brand and wrote, designed and organized the educational content from scratch. She is continually developing new materials to help entrepreneurs design their businesses and products to fit their lifestyle, personality and talents.

This growing collection of educational content is both an exercise in "eating your own dog food" as well as a service to ambitious tech-savvy entrepreneurs. Boiling down over a decade of branding and design expertise into bite-size exercises for the design-challenged has been an incredible experience that has strengthened Kari's love for the design process and its ability to serve people in practical and often life-changing ways.

More Projects

OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

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Little Green Light

A cloud-based donor management platform provides nonprofits with simple, approachable tech tools to maximize fundraising efforts.

SERVICES
Brand Strategy, Visual Identity Design Refresh, Website Design, Copywriting, Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Refresh, Brand Expansion, Website Design, Marketing Collateral

After ten years in business, Little Green Light had gained outstanding recognition in the nonprofit world. To accelerate signups, they decided it was time to enlist outside help to express their fun personality and consolidate their message.

Working in-depth with the executive team, we pulled together their values and individual personalities into a simple, potent identity. We paid special attention to the user experience on their website to guide visitors through the product features and benefits, and removing obstacles to encourage user sign-ups.

We expanded their new identity across a variety of marketing collateral, including a custom responsive WordPress website, complete with humorous illustrations and eye-catching animations, as well as digital and printed collateral, including trade show exhibits, one sheets and online ads.

More Projects

OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

… Back to Portfolio …

Digsite

A unique social platform makes it possible for corporations of all sizes to run affordable user validation tests in a fraction of the time of traditional focus groups.

SERVICES
Collateral Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Expansion

Building off their existing logo and color palette, we helped Digsite polish and expand their visual identity into Keynote presentation templates, marketing collateral and custom icons and illustrations.

We illustrated custom icons that could be used in a variety of formats for their printed and digital collateral.

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

… Back to Portfolio …

Ten Forward Consulting

Ten Forward Consulting writes scalable custom software for medium and large enterprises.

SERVICES
Brand Strategy, Identity Design Refresh, Responsive Website Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Launch, Website Design

Ten Forward is named after the lounge on Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, where the crew would come for sage advice and a drink. The advice was always simple, deep and candid—a vibe that rings true for Ten Forward's personable demeanor and acumen. Approachability can be a rare asset in the world of tech, so we emphasized this with a simple, familiar keyboard key.

To further the message of clever simplicity, we combined the 1 and 0 onto one key instead of on two separate keys. This was our way of saying, "Ten Forward's developers are so fast, they’re able to do the work in half the time of other shops.” Or, “we're so easy to work with, all you need to do is ‘push the button.’”

Seven months after their brand launch, Ten Forward added two new employees and continues to wow their growing list of local and national clientele.

Staying in line with the Star Trek theme, we created a teleportation animation effect on the portraits of their team members for their website's About page.

We developed a series of geometric icons to represent each of their areas of expertise. These provided a way to differentiate their offerings and gave an intangible service physicality to feel more like a tangible product for sale.

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

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CloudMunch Website

CloudMunch is an ambitious team working to tame the complex world of DevOps with their unifying web app, integrations and template tools.

SERVICES
UX Design, Website Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Expansion, Website Design, Product Development

We worked with CloudMunch through multiple iterations of their marketing website and app. We created everything from their interface, to the individual product icons and their illustrated onboarding process and product diagrams.

We designed the website to be flexible so the layout could accommodate new products as they were developed. We created a series of icons for each product and illustrated how the products could be used together with other platforms and coding languages.

Visitors jump from the website directly into signing up for an account and starting their first project. The illustrated step-by-step instructions show users how to use the app as they progress through the account setup process.

CloudMunch App

See the work we did for the CloudMunch app interface.

View Project ►

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

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CloudMunch App

An ambitious team developed a platform to tame the complex world of DevOps with their unifying web app, integrations and template tools.

SERVICES
UX Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Expansion, Product Launch, Web Application

We worked with CloudMunch through multiple iterations of their marketing website and app platform. This included designing everything from their individual product icons to their multi-step onboarding process and illustrated product diagrams.

Because of the quick turnaround times for their product releases and their established image in the market, we didn't stray far from their original look and feel. We made gradual updates to their color palette, graphics and layouts, and consulted on their use of language and user experience to create a polished and simplified presentation for increased user adoption.

Within months of our work together, CloudMunch was able to be acquired by JFrog.

The CloudMunch application featured a Workspace, Integration Hub and Dashboard. We simplified their user interface and unified their color palette to create a clean, uncluttered work environment for developers.

We illustrated custom icons to depict each of their products and distinct sections within their application.

In addition to redesigning their user interface, we helped them streamline user onboarding.

We illustrated clear step-by-step visuals to help new users get started with their first project.

CloudMunch Website

See the work we did for the CloudMunch marketing website.

View Project ►

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

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Quietyme

Quietyme developed technology to resolve noise complaints before they even happen. Over the course of their rapid business development, we supported Quietyme's growth with copywriting, design and illustrations to position their brand as a real contender in three verticals.

SERVICES
Branding & Identity Design, Responsive Website Design, Collateral, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Brand Launch, Collateral Design, Website Design

Through two accelerators, and thanks to their dedicated founding team, Quietyme grew into a respected brand as the guardians of peace and quiet. We supported them from their very early stages while they were still distilling their ideas and designing their prototypes. Over the course of a few years, we supported the launch of their products in the healthcare, hospitality and property management verticals. Their "Internet of Things" includes a configurable web app, base station and sensors.

The concept of quiet and the glowing sensor lights became the focus of their visual identity. We set aside large areas of white space in their layouts to provide a calm space in contrast with the colorful gradients that mimic the glowing sensor lights. The friendly fonts and color combinations create an approachable image for this high-tech shushing system that helps organizations provide more peaceful environments and gain favor in their industries.

The logomark is the letter “Q” shaped by four walls of a room. Its shape is also similar to a chat icon to highlight the communicative nature of the device to building managers.

We drew their base station and sensors as realistic vector illustrations so they could be scaled to any size and be placed on any colored background throughout their collateral with total flexibility.

Each room is outfitted with a noise-detecting sensor that warns occupants when they get too loud. Breaches are reported in real-time to management to prevent complaints.

"Few designers understand and support business the way Kari does. We trust her with our most important projects, from our logo design to our investor pitch decks, and we lean on her professional guidance for our brand. She created materials that impress all of our clients, even the ones that currently work with the GE's and Samsungs of the world."

John Bialk, Founder & CEO

"We’ve seen the wisdom in working with someone who understands branding and startups from the beginning. Kari makes it easy to work quickly and effectively. She is our go-to person in many matters not even directly related to design. She has never let us down."

John Bialk, Founder & CEO

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

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Redox

This rapidly growing health data integration company is on a mission to improve healthcare experiences by powering a lean, developer-friendly platform.

SERVICES
Brand Strategy, Visual Identity Design, Website Design, Website Development, Product Design, Product Development, Print Design, Marketing Collateral, Advertisement Design, Illustration

PROJECT TYPE
Branding, Marketing, Website Design & Development, Product Design & Development

When Redox first approached us to refine their visual identity, their team was only five strong. We supported their growth by operating as an extension of their team, providing strategic creative services ranging from illustration to product development. By year five, their total funding grew to $60 million and their staff count increased to 172 people.

We amplified their desire for clean, minimalist design with bold patterns, friendly fonts and a dynamic color palette to express their upbeat culture and driven attitude.

The Redox Podcast Launch

See the work we did for the Redox Podcast launch, including music selection, templated graphics and landing pages.

View Project ►

Lean Design for Startups

More Projects

OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

Little Green Light

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

Digsite

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

Ten Forward Consulting

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

CloudMunch Website

CloudMunch App

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

CloudMunch App

CloudMunch Website

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OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

Quietyme

The logomark is the letter “Q” shaped by four walls of a room. Its shape is also similar to a chat icon to highlight the communicative nature of the device to building managers.

We drew their base station and sensors as realistic vector illustrations so they could be scaled to any size and be placed on any colored background throughout their collateral with total flexibility.

Each room is outfitted with a noise-detecting sensor that warns occupants when they get too loud. Breaches are reported in real-time to management to prevent complaints.

John Bialk, Founder & CEO

"We’ve seen the wisdom in working with someone who understands branding and startups from the beginning. Kari makes it easy to work quickly and effectively. She is our go-to person in many matters not even directly related to design. She has never let us down."

John Bialk, Founder & CEO

More Projects

OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods

Redox

The Redox Podcast Launch

More Projects

OgdenGlazer Legal

Chalkdoc: Web App

Little Green Light

Roland Foods