Through lots of prototyping we ended up choosing to mimick the familiar aesthetic of OS X by using the system font, rounded grey and blue chat bubbles, and a very minimal UI.

The Logo

Like many other digital designers, I don’t have a classic graphic design education so the branding process as a whole is not my speciality. I did explore it on past projects and I kept reading regularly on the subject, but I knew it would be my biggest challenge.

We were very confident with the name “Missive” which means “an important message” hinting at the professional nature of the app, and with the added bonus of being a true French cognate (same in english and french). A perfect match for the grand mission of four french-canadians.

The very first sketches of the Missive logo

Lesson #2: Balancing instinct and strategy will help you in the long run.

The younger me was used to rely on gut-feeling as many junior designers are. But for a bigger project like Missive, strategy helped me a lot. I established brand values, listed required assets from logomark to app icons to social media banners, and researched competition (some of which are now dead or acquired).

Strategy eliminates a lot of the early shitty ideas and helps you cruise through the inspiration-seeking phase much more smoothly.

Eventually, I came up with a logo built from two speech bubble tips referencing both the email and chat components of the app coming together.

I kept an on-trend monolinear aesthetic and set the logotype in ARS Maquette Pro’s unicase alternates which although being also a bit trendy, reinforced a feeling of reliable modernity.

The Icons

The app UI was coming together, but using free iconsets didn’t feel right for a professional email app like Missive.

Don’t get me wrong, some icon sets are very nice, but it’s a bit like trying to fit flip flops with a suit, you’ll never really hit the mark.

I loved the dual-toned OS X icons and set on building a similar but custom icon set for our own use. I wanted to reference the logo’s stencil-like utility by removing line intersections which also created a feeling of depth.