Project Scope

I designed the company’s logo, brand identity, marketing website and product application. After raising enough capital, the company was ambitious and wanted to work quickly to bring their product to market.

Research

I was hired to create a fresh and simple logo and brand identity for Rapidly. As with every logo and brand identity project, I started by collecting relevant information from the client and doing research about the product that would be provided to their customers. Some of the research collected included competitive analysis and demographic factors. 

After collecting general information about the company and product, I start by exploring logo concepts. Sketching gives me complete freedom to visually express my imagination. It is my favorite part of the logo design process. I never allow myself to get stuck on one concept. There will be lots to throw away and that is the point – generate as many directions as possible to see what sticks and what doesn’t.

After a couple of weeks worth of sketching, I started to narrow in on the best solutions to present to the client. I then narrowed in on the top options and sketched out fine-tuned versions of each of the logos. Those were then compiled into the initial presentation for the client.

After several rounds of revisions and further refinement, the client and I landed on the final logo for Rapidly. It is a vibrant and bold design, while also remaining timeless and will appeal to a wide audience.

Upon finishing up the logo and brand identity, I was hired to redesign Rapidly’s marketing website. I used the existing website as a starting point for defining the content and required pages. After review, I offered to rewrite most of the site’s headlines and body copy. I also made many recommendations along the way on how to organize the content and strategized the most effective way to create two primary entry points for the Tax Payer and the Tax Pro.

The Application

The Rapidly app is targeted at two different personas – The Tax Payer and the Tax Professional. The tasks within the application are simple, but the process can be a bit complex. It was essential to break up the process into multiple steps through wizards so that each part of the process could be easily digested.

Flowchart

Due to the complex nature of the Tax Payer and Tax Professional workflows, creating a flowchart was essential to my process. The client presented a large document of different scenarios across both personas. To better digest these scenarios and begin to connect them into one seamless flow, we started with a flowchart. This part of the process went through many stages of repositioning tasks until everything came together in one cohesive flow.

Low Fidelity Mocks

Once the flowchart was in a good spot, we turned to design. It was important to start with low fidelity mock ups of some of the primary screens. The low fidelity phase is essential to my process. It gives the client and myself the chance to be open and honest with feedback while not being married to any particular styles or colors.

High Fidelity

Once the low fidelity mockups were approved, I moved into high fidelity design. At this stage, I focused on pixel perfection, micro interactions, edge cases, error states and established the UI system that would be used across the application. We also focused in on how all the screens would translate to mobile. While I made sure to consider a responsive grid along the way, there are some screens that need special attention as certain UI patterns don’t always translate down to smaller devices.