Introduction
Before I dive in, let me start with what brand means to our team at Scribe.
We see brand as the personality of a company. In the most ethereal terms, it’s the spirit you want your company to evoke to its users. It’s not just what the website looks like; to us, brand is every single interaction we have with you – our users!
(This was my best artistic representation of what “brand” means to Scribe. Don’t tell our Design team I snuck this in here.)
Brand is made up of visual and narrative elements. For the sake of today’s blog we’re going to focus on the new visual identity (but stay tuned for more).
Why a new visual identity?
When we originally designed our brand visuals back in 2021, the world of Scribe was a lot different. We had 5,000 users, eight employees and were about to announce our $23 million Series A. We had two weeks to find an agency to build us a brand and get it out the door.
We created our original brand based on what we knew at the time. (Hint: we didn’t know much.) We wanted a brand that would appeal to a broad group of users and felt approachable, delightful and confident.
The result? Our visual identity relied heavily on pastel colors and flat shapes. It was intentionally designed to be pleasing and accessible to everyone.
Fast forward to 2023. Things have changed. Scribe is represented in every single country in the world. Our 800,000 users have collectively shared three million Scribes and Pages. Our 40 person team spends countless hours connecting with our users and customers.
We have a saying on our Marketing team: “what got us here won’t get us there.” It’s easy to mark something off as “done.” It's harder to constantly reflect on what has worked to get us to our current state and whether it’s what we need to get to the next one.
When we revisited our brand we realized it was lacking. In the past two years, we’ve learned so much from you, our users, and grown so much as a company.
We want our brand to reflect that. So we made a new one!
The ethereal part of our brand – the “go-to person”
Take a look at Scribe’s users and you’ll likely find someone representing every job on planet Earth (and also in space – we literally have an astronaut using Scribe).
But we’ve found there’s something that connects our universe of users: they’re the go-to person. Ninety-eight percent of Scribe power users identify as a “go-to person” for a system, process or tool.
This means you’re busy. You’re constantly tapped by your boss, teammates and customers to answer questions, build trainings or document what you know. No matter how busy you are, you're always generous with your time. Hardworking and full of potential, you sometimes struggle to balance this work with focusing on your core job. You’re capable, helpful and most importantly – you care. A lot.
(You can see why Scribe is such a hit with these folks. But this is a brand story, so enough about us - back to you!)
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You’re one of the heroes of your team, but we know it’s a love/hate job. On the love side, you likely feel fulfilled, connected and helpful. On the hate side, it takes a LOT of time – we found the average go-to person spends 12 hours/week helping people, answering questions and showing others how to best do things.
The result? You’re a ninja at work. You’re efficient and focused. Y’all are one heck of a productive bunch. Our goal is to honor your working style and present a brand that is also efficient and practical.
Here comes the ethereal part.
We want you to look at Scribe’s brand and feel recognized, valued and seen. You’re not just the lone wolf. You put the team on your back. You’re the heroes of your organization. The most reliable person to go to with a question.
You deserve to be celebrated.
How this shows up in visual brand
Alright, so now you know how we want you to feel. With that in mind, let’s talk about how we get that across with a look. Let me break down three of our biggest design changes.
This should be quite obvious by now, but there’s a LOT of you in our brand. We wanted to showcase YOU everywhere as the go-to person, the center of your team’s universe. You’ll see this resonate in lots of photos of users. Our users often have a circular effect highlighting you as the center that impacts everyone around you.
Recognize that circular effect? It’s the click target – aka the orange (or purple, blue, white etc) dot in every screenshot showing your viewers where to click. The click target is the center of the Scribe universe. Without it, your viewers would have zero clue how to follow along. And without you, your team would have no clue how to follow along.
Going back to how you like to work efficiently – we’ve ditched the pastel colors in favor of a bolder, more efficient blue. The shade of blue we use is meant to make you feel empowered and productive. We know you have about seven seconds before someone Slacks you with a question, so we want to respect your time while also giving you a little shot of bright blue espresso to help you get through your day.
Keep your eyes peeled for all sorts of other new design elements you find in our branding. I'll let Tony, our Head Designer and the mastermind behind our new visuals, go in more depth in a future blog. 🤓
What’s next & thank you
We are thrilled to finally roll out our rebrand everywhere. You’ll see it on our website, emails, social posts and more. We hope you feel like we’ve heard you and have seen you.
We’re just getting started. You all have a front row seat to watch the evolution of our new visual brand and the Scribe story, voice and tone.
Thank you to all our users who have hopped on a call, answered a survey or provided direct feedback. You’ve influenced both our product and our brand. We appreciate you.
And huge thank you to Scribe’s designers, marketers and co-founders for the countless hours you all spent making sure we got this right.
