In September of 2021, Taplytics decided to create and launch a new company, focused solely on feature flagging and experimentation. Conceptualized as a tool for developers to help them better manage their release processes and reduce complexity, DevCycle was born. Tasked with creating a new logo and brand identity for the company, I developed several initial concepts and style directions and after a few rounds of internal feedback and iteration, we landed on a final concept, affectionately known as Togglebot.
Project Date
October 2021
My Role
Lead designer responsible for coming up with logo concepts, running feedback sessions, and developing the new brand's style direction.
Preliminary discussions about what DevCycle’s logo should convey yielded a couple of keywords (fast, reliable, earnest, and brilliant) and key concepts (it should be simple, clean, modern, and convey some element of speed or motion). Several important quotes from early-stage marketing material were also highlighted as good starting points and they included:
“Deploy faster, reduce release complexity, and maximize impact”
“Where features are always release ready”
“Designed for modern development processes / streamlining developer workflows”
“Continuously deploy code”
From these early discussions I concluded that DevCycle’s logo needed to be:
Simple (symbolizing a reduction in release complexity and a streamlining of developer workflows)
Clean / crisp (feel impactful but approachable)
Something that developers would relate to / feel a connection to
Cyclical (symbolizing the idea of motion and continuously deploying code)
Friendly and approachable
Something that related to the idea of targeting specific users / turning features on or off for particular audience segments
With this information I went off and started experimenting with logo ideas and typography treatments, developing 9 initial concepts and 3 different type treatments. Here are a few of my initial concepts:
Round 2: Refinement
Tweaking Existing Concepts & Exploring New Ideas
After the initial round a winning type treatment was chosen, 2 concepts were selected for further refinement, and some additional ideas came about that meant a few more ideas were going to be explored. Here’s what came out of round 2:
Round 3: Picking A Winner
A Winner Is Chosen & Style Exploration Begins
At the end of round 2, a winner was selected and I began exploring different colour treatments. Here’s the winning concept, a brief explanation of what the logo represents, and some early experimentation with colour:
Results
Final Logo & Branding
At the conclusion of the branding exercise we ended up with a logo and concept that everyone was really happy with (including all of our own developers which was a good sign!) and a general style direction that set us up for success as we began to work on our company website and the application itself. Here’s a sampling from the final brand guidelines:
Design / Strategy: Trevor Davson
All work completed for and owned by Taplytics Inc. / DevCycle.com
