Role : Brand Designer, Art Director, Graphic Designer, Illustrator
As part of an ongoing content marketing strategy at Container Solutions, we were asked to create a monthly newsletter to promote Cloud Native practices, educate and provide tech news to the community. What started as a newsletter snowballed into a 360 tech marketing brand that held conferences attended by 1000's people, webinars (the so-called 'WTF'inars') and a community reach well beyond the original experiment.
Visual Brand Development
The entire look and feel of the brand was co-crafted by myself and the other in-house designer. The predominant goal was to create a brand that would appeal to the software community and stand out from the tech news marketplace. As such the original concepts were deliberately kept very loose and focussed around quirky imagery, bubble writing and the idea of representing the cloud native world in some way.
Visual Brand Development
The entire look and feel of the brand was co-crafted by myself and the other in-house designer. The predominant goal was to create a brand that would appeal to the software community and stand out from the tech news marketplace. As such the original concepts were deliberately kept very loose and focussed around quirky imagery, bubble writing and the idea of representing the cloud native world in some way.
Original Concepts
The finalised logo design fused several of the ideas from the concept stage and provided a tripartite approach that could be used across different channels. The central brandmark was created from a speech bubble which could be used for different topics. The other took ideas from the Cloud Native world and knowledge tree and fused them with isometric design to reflect the technical nature of the subject matter. The simplified black white and red was intended to break the mould of blue/grey tech branding. We then applied all this to a web and newsletter design that could be replicated every month with new content
Finalised Web Layouts and Newsletter Designs
Monthly Editorial Design and ABM campaigns.
Following the initial branding exercise, a lot of my time was taken producing unique editorial illustrations for blogs from external and internal contributors, along with design tasks for producing the newsletter, social promotion and website updates. These often took on a humourous and satirical nature as a means to stand out and make technical topics appeal to a broad audience and became something of a USP for the brand.
Furthermore, we utilised monthly "WTF'inars" as a means of lead generation through paid campaigns and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) follow-ups, exemplified by the "slow to flow" campaign devised by our copywriter and myself.
Following the initial branding exercise, a lot of my time was taken producing unique editorial illustrations for blogs from external and internal contributors, along with design tasks for producing the newsletter, social promotion and website updates. These often took on a humourous and satirical nature as a means to stand out and make technical topics appeal to a broad audience and became something of a USP for the brand.
Furthermore, we utilised monthly "WTF'inars" as a means of lead generation through paid campaigns and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) follow-ups, exemplified by the "slow to flow" campaign devised by our copywriter and myself.
Examples of monthly design content and ABM campaigns
Brand Development - Hacking the Org
As readership expanded, the brand diversified into various formats, including a monthly podcast titled "Hacking the Org." I created a versatile sub-brand for it, featuring two speech bubbles with hollow centres to accommodate monthly guest company names. Notable guests included representatives from Github, Google, and industry thought leader Adrian Cockcroft (now residing in Hawaii).
Hacking the Org Logo design and flexible application across for different guests
Brand Development - The Conferences
As we delved into the event and readership data, specific topics emerged as highly attended, leading to the development of specialized events and, eventually, the creation of three significant tech conferences – "WTF is Cloud Native '22", "WTF is SRE '22," and "WTF is SRE '23," where I served as the principal concept and graphic designer. For a comprehensive write-up, please click on the provided blue links.
As we delved into the event and readership data, specific topics emerged as highly attended, leading to the development of specialized events and, eventually, the creation of three significant tech conferences – "WTF is Cloud Native '22", "WTF is SRE '22," and "WTF is SRE '23," where I served as the principal concept and graphic designer. For a comprehensive write-up, please click on the provided blue links.
Examples of WTF Brand conferences that evolved from the WTF brand.
