Design @ Decide: How Our Creative Team Built a Brand New Brand in Two Months

On February 7, 2022, LockerDome officially relaunched as Decide. Rebranding any business is an enormous undertaking, especially when that business is experiencing rapid growth and you have two months to get the job done. Thankfully, Decide has Rasheed Sulaiman leading our creative team as Senior Vice President, Product & Creative.

Rasheed was kind enough to sit down and share his thoughts on design and Decide’s recent rebrand for our followers on LinkedIn.?

Tell us a little bit about your background.?

Most of my experience is in design, more specifically product design. Though I pursued formal design education, I attribute a lot of how I approach a creative project to a natural ability to visualize new ideas and a desire to constantly learn new things. I started building websites in 2008 before working with a small design agency in St. Louis. Eventually I joined LockerDome in 2012 as the Creative Director, and my role has grown over the past decade to include oversight of product design and the company’s visual identity.?

A decade after I started, we are now a new company. Our future is very bright. From product design to business cards, that future will include a lot of design work.?

What do you enjoy the most about the creative process?

For me, refinement is the most enjoyable part of the process. When you start a design project, your head explodes with thousands of ideas. You really have endless options to choose from — until you start refining and defining what you’re looking for. You have to ask yourself, over and over, if visual communication works well with written communication and the company’s broader identity.?

Going through that process of refinement and alignment is really what I enjoy most.?

LockerDome recently rebranded to Decide. Can you give us a brief overview of the work your creative team did?

Initially our plan was to approach it as essentially a logo redesign, including holding onto some of the elements of the LockerDome brand that worked really well for us. However, after talking with our CEO, Gabe Lozano, it was clear we needed to show the world that this really is a new direction for the company. That gave our team a blank canvas. We used the written copy and narrative to help guide our early thinking regarding the visual identity of the new brand. Certain key phrases and elements really stood out, including machine learning and the Decision Marketplace. We wanted the design aesthetics to align with our current strengths as well as our future plans. The brand components also needed to be able to be used in different ways, and the team really achieved that.?

That focus on a brand that worked for where we are and where we are headed really began with the logo. We refined every character so that it would fit our stylistic approach. From there, we aligned our color themes and palette with the logo design and the company’s written copy.?

I am really proud of the creative team that worked on this rebranding. They did an excellent job. In design, a lot of the creative work you do doesn’t make the final funnel. There is a lot to be proud of that no one outside of the company will ever see, and they embraced that part of the creative process. Our team showed up and had great energy. I am lucky to work with superstars like Brett Woodley, Tempestt Burel, and Michael Estrada. Our team always brings their best, even when the work isn’t glamorous.?

Were there any unique or unexpected sources of inspiration your team used during the creative process??

This was the most elaborate design process I’ve ever done. We looked at different sources for inspiration, but wanted our work to be original and not a reflection of something someone else did. I feel like the team achieved that. Our brand doesn’t resemble other companies in our industry.?

Our look feels unique and fresh, and it is designed to be adaptable as our business grows and enters new markets.?

What excites you, personally, about Decide’s brand??

Right now we have some definition, but seeing the long road ahead of us is exciting. If this is where we are beginning, wherever we end is a progression of the work we do now. Our plan is to help solve some of the real-world problems facing the world today. That’s a big challenge, and I like big challenges.?

We are moving into uncharted territory, and that gives me and our team a lot to look forward to.?