Central
Central is a high-end office space search platform. Building owners list their available office space for business owners and managers to find. They had recently gotten acquired by a leading national co-working space company.
Challenge
They came to me needing a change from their old name, PivotDesk, as well as a fresh new brand identity and product experience. They needed to take their brand to the next level now that they were no longer a small startup. They also now had to appeal to higher-end clientele.
Solution
I first started with developing a new name to move away from “PivotDesk”. One that had a more mature tone that would speak to higher-end clients. After many ideas, we finally settled on “Central” which was simple, elegant, and invoked a sense of place. “Central” sounded like somewhere you wanted your business to be.
I then moved on to developing a visual identity for this new brand. I pulled samples from other respectable brands for us to analyze what we liked and disliked about their approaches. This lead me to begin sketching ideas for a logo and typeface that felt mature with a sense of location. After many ideas, we finally landed on a mark that appeared to be an abstract of a cross street on a map. The accompanying typeface is Landmark by Hoefler & Co. (one of the world’s most renowned type foundries). To further drive this identity’s feel of a physical presence, I added isolated physical artifacts along with simple, organic colors.
Once the visual identity was set, I could move on to designing the product experience. We had a lot of usage data from their existing product and had a good understand of user’s likes and dislikes. Based on this knowledge, we made some improvements to how efficiently users could find what they wanted. I designed a simple and elegant interface that matched the brand that was direct and to the point. Once this new interface was developed I conducted user testing sessions to get feedback from real life users. The results were very good although we found some places where we could make improvements. After some fine tuning, the final website was ready to go live.
Results
After launching the new brand and product, Central was able to gain more user interest and conversions. The product was now seen as a resource that high-end clients could use to find high-end office space. The product interfaces was simple and to-the-point so clients didn’t have to waste time finding exactly what they were looking for.
Branding
Product
