Technology revolution
Employee Republic - logo, branding and corporate communications
It’s got to be said… Rob Liddiard is one of the most enthusiastic and likeable people I’ve ever met. So it made complete sense to me that he is CEO of Employee Republic - an organisation devoted to galvanising large and diverse workforces, improving their productivity and performance as a result.
I expect that Rob has many bright ideas at work each day, but arguably one of his most illuminating has been the creation of Yapster, a chat technology for use in the workplace. Devised and developed by Rob and his business partner, Craig McMillan, the Yapster app is particularly aimed at employees in large companies with distributed workforces to get their ideas heard by colleagues and management. In addition, Yapster also helps colleagues to support each other practically, allowing them to link up and swap shifts if required.
Rob asked RLB design to help develop the visual identity of Employee Republic ahead of the ‘soft launch’ of Yapster in January 2016. He was after a logo and branding, rolling out to corporate assets. I was only too happy to help. He wanted the logo and branding of Employee Republic to appear forward thinking, reflecting the notions of innovation and technology. He also wanted it to appeal to even the most cautious CEOs on a business level, to help convince them of the merits of connecting with their employees in this new, open way.
Playing with the typography and colour, I presented a range of ideas, all centred around the company name. These included distressed poster fonts, heavy san serifs with stylised revolutionary stars in reds, oranges and yellows, and visual references to technology, using coding language to create an icon and overall typographic styling. It was a methodic exercise, working through the possibilities. I was particularly interested to see how far the designs could be pushed: for example, using the word ‘Republic’ in a red, poster style font with a revolutionary star would give entirely the wrong message. But there were elements of this look that could, and did, work.
The chosen logo used Courier (the font prevalently seen in code), which was set in a vibrant orange, and a coding icon was created within a circle. I organised for bright, orange, double sided business cards to be litho printed, with information set tabulated to look like lines of code. These were received extremely well. In addition, I set up letterheads and proposal documents in Word, and created a dynamic, styled PowerPoint presentation document to support Employee Republic ahead of their meetings with potential new clients.
I am really looking forward to hearing how Employee Republic’s Yapster goes out into the market and how the business grows. And of course, I’ll be on hand to support for future presentations and design developments needed. (Take note, Mark Zuckerberg!)
See more about our work with Employee Republic.
