If you ever worked on a new brand project or a re-brand for a product, you probably learned that the journey from the starting point to launch is full of sketches, iterations and sometimes the end result can be much different than anticipated. This makes sense, a lot of sense actually. When starting a brand project, we come with assumptions, packed with the details and information on what we need to communicate, and a head full of creative ideas on how we’re going to do it. Along the way, we get feedback, understand constraints and our concept changes and evolves until it is launched.

Without a doubt, this is the best way to make sure the brand is mature and ready for launch. But what about all the assets that we put energy and effort in, develop into the final stages to fit the visual language perfectly, but still end up unused? In other words, shouldn’t we cut the fat?

Building an MVP brand

MVP is probably the most overused term in product development today. Frank Robinson came up with the term in 2001 and Eric Ries popularized it. According to Techopedia: A minimum viable product (MVP) is the most pared down version of a product that can still be released. An MVP has three key characteristics:

It has enough value that people are willing to use it

It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters

It provides a feedback loop to guide future development

In the product world, it can be argued that this term is miss-used or overused. But what about design processes? And I’m not referring to UX/UI process, which is naturally part of the product life cycle. I’m talking about building a brand, an identity, a process that is usually estimated in a few months and planned similar to the waterfall methodology, where all stages of the project are completed before the release. In this approach, you first need to finalize a massive project, which is the brand, before you can actually implement it on the products.

What if you want to move faster? What if you can’t wait for everything to be ready step by step? This was our challenge. We wanted to build the Kin website in parallel to the brand. We also wanted to quickly implement all brand changes in our mobile native experiences as well.

Planning

When I started working at Kin, this was the first agenda I had to push forward. The old Kin website didn’t represent the concept of Kin at all. Not with the information we wanted to share, not with the message and voice, and not with the visuals. We had to create a new brand and a new website.

Approaching this challenge, the first thing I did, was creating a flow chart, to represent the process for rebranding.

This flow covers all the things we would have needed — from fonts and images to icons and components, not just for the website, but also for our product mobile experiences as well.

After talking about the process with the management, I was asked 1 crucial question: “Can you do it in 2 months”?

Re-planning

Understanding the urgency of replacing the current website, and also wanting to avoid duplicated work on a new-with-old-brand website, and then a completely new website, I had to re-assess the effort.

There were 2 options to move forward:

Retouch the existing brand and creating a new website first. Then start building the new brand and implement it on the new website. Creating a new brand specifically by the requirements of the website.

Taking into consideration the team estimated effort on each of the options, the second option was much more efficient and made more sense. We will launch the new website with the new brand. In 2 months. How can we do it?

The full workflow was no longer relevant. We now had to shift into a different way of thinking and a different way of working.

Steps

We knew that some assets are needed as basic foundations, no matter what the website spec is, so we started with them:

Fonts Color palette Images

The exploration was made on a generic look-alike web page, so we’ll be able to also see the look and feel in context.

After defining the general concept, reviewing and getting feedback we started creating the assets. Everything was created as the leanest version possible, with the understanding we will come back and add more assets in the next version.

The font and wide range of colors were selected and created to support the bold images we planned to use.

Even with a tight schedule, we didn’t want to compromise on quality and decided to shoot most of the images we will use, by ourselves. With the photoshoot, our approach stayed the same — we shoot what we need for V1.

From here, the process was pretty straightforward — research, concepts, reviews — but all in the set of mind of what we need for the specific feature or page we were working on.

If it was a button — then a button was created, taking all states and other appearances it might have on the website under consideration.

Not all went smoothly, some components and assets went back-and-forth while we were working our way through new pages. Some product specs and priorities changed, as sometimes happens with big projects. But, the overall work on the brand was focused and fast.

In the end, we launched a lean website, with a lean brand in the most efficient way. We didn’t get to a point where we designed assets no one will use. All assets were clear in their usage and purpose. This is how we eventually managed to achieve it all and only push the release by 1 month.

When looking back on the full plan for the brand, this is what we have achieved when launching the website:

The brand is far from finished, and we still have a lot of work to do. But we keep working in the same method and developing assets by need. This is how we can work fast and efficient.

MVB

If we go back to the MVP definition, but instead of the P for product, we’ll put a B for brand, this is how the process will turn out.

A minimum viable brand (MVB) is the most pared down version of a brand that can still be released. An MVB has three key characteristics:

It has enough value that people are willing to use it

It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters

It provides a feedback loop to guide future development

In other words, the basic foundation, the messaging and the visual identity are defined so that even as a lean version, the brand is strong enough to make a statement and to get users attention, while having the ability to adjust and improve in the next version, according to feedback.

You can also view what we achieved so far at kin.org