SpiderOak
Secure Software
2019
Rebranding concept
After years of building niche backup tools for privacy enthusiasts, SpiderOak set its sights on a bigger stage: government security.
The new brand concept stripped things down to the essentials — no frivolities, just clarity and trust.
Brand Story
Creative Direction, Copywriting
Background
Despite a loyal following among security enthusiasts for SpiderOak’s flagship One Backup product, the response to the proprietary applications in the years that followed was sorely underwhelming.
With the redevelopment of its private blockchain platform, the company was looking to take things in a new direction.
Pivoting sharply from the consumer market it had known for over a decade, SpiderOak sought to position itself as indispensable technology for defense and intelligence communities within the United States government.
This new business-to-government direction required a straight-forward, no-nonsense approach in all of the company’s brand and marketing communications.
tagline
“Securing the world’s data, bit by bit.”
Bit by bit, or, little by little.
A “bit” being the smallest unit of data in a computer, the line is also a nod to the small startup’s scrappy resilience, managing to do more with less in the face of numerous hurdles throughout the years.
The very nature of 8-bit is simplification, and SpiderOak had been struggling for years not to come across as too technical.
What better visual metaphor for blockchain than 8-bit styling with its tiny clusters of squares — a chain of blocks in the form of pixels.
Early SpiderOak brand designs were even based on old school 8-bit styles.
Recalling the earliest days of computers, when pixel icons were first created to make the incomprehensible technology more intuitive and user friendly, SpiderOak needed a similarly simplified “less is more” approach to connect current and future audiences with its innovative security-first blockchain technology.
To anchor this idea visually, the new logo ends with a simple square “bit” — a single block that ties the brand’s story back to its foundation in data, pixels, and blockchain.
Logo Redesign
Creative Direction, Design
The old “keyhole oak tree” mark felt too literal — and increasingly out of step with the company’s pivot toward government security. Its chunky typography carried weight, but not the precision the brand now needed.
The redesign introduced a lighter, crisper cut of Graphik and shifted the focus back to the name itself. By carving a small square “bit” from the “O” and echoing it as a final block at the end of the wordmark, the logo now tied directly into the brand story — data secured, bit by bit.
Before
Keyhole oak logo
After
Precision and clarity, bit by bit
Logo System
Before
Although the SpiderOak brand had struggled to find solid footing over the years, the original three product logos, at least, had never changed.
AFTER
Creative Direction, Design
Wanting to maintain some continuity between these mainstays and the newest branding concept, the logo system naturally expanded using the same geometric grid of precise triangles and squares.
Using this same grid, numerous other aspects of the brand could be built out with a unique identifying mark while still fitting cohesively within the larger brand system.
icons
Creative Direction, Design
The 8-bit icons, often coupled with Roboto Mono, are used throughout the brand concept to indicate points of user interaction.
Such “clickable” elements appear throughout the website to signal interactive points for users.
In print, they serve as intentional accents, highlighting the company website or emphasizing a pull quote.
Alphabet
Creative Direction, Design
In need of a strong accessory headline font, a pixel-based character set seemed the logical choice.
The strong square shapes complement the logo system in a way that Roboto Mono, even bold, could not, as illustrated in the Release Notes.
Products
Creative Direction, Design
Taking cues from Swiss Design, black and white photography served as effective at-a-glance communication for objectivity and clarity.
Downloads
Creative Direction, Design
With software updates constantly underway, SpiderOak needed a way to keep Release Notes and downloadable versions current.
The website concept anticipated a workflow using the Hugo static site generator and collaborative development between Marketing and DevOps to enable continuous updates.
Release Notes
Creative Direction, Design
With software updates constantly underway, SpiderOak needed a way to keep Release Notes and downloadable versions current.
The website concept anticipated a workflow using the Hugo static site generator and collaborative development between Marketing and DevOps to enable continuous updates.
Whitepapers
Creative Direction, Design
Blockchain is no easy concept to explain, so SpiderOak’s marketing materials needed to be as digestible as possible.
Strongly gridded layouts, inspired by the International Typographic Style, helped to break content up into manageable blocks, improving comprehension, building trust, and providing yet another visual metaphor for the underlying blockchain technology.
Effective grid systems also enabled consistent and flexible templates across print and web alike. Whitepaper covers were inspired by the timeless posters of Swiss Design.
