Danielle Vernelson
Brand Evolution
Case Study Supporting the Vaisala Rebrand
Goal of the project: To help Viasala extend their untested brand system across 65+ pieces of collateral, in a tight 2-month timeline
Created while freelancing at: Incite Media, for Actualize Marketing
Role: Brand Designer, and Some Art Directing
Project Details A Large Rebrand Project
Vaisala, a client of Actualize Marketing, was preparing for a major 2024 launch and needed to update a broad set of assets—including Product Spotlights, Case Studies, eBooks, and Infographics—to align with a newly evolving brand. Actualize brought me on to support the team as the primary designer on the project.
As additional designers joined, I also took on an art direction role—reviewing and refining their work to ensure consistency across all deliverables and serving as the designer most closely aligned with the emerging brand system.
The Old Brand
Previously, Visalia's design style utilized a lot of diagonals, transparent blue, and an inconsistent icon style. The templates didn't have a strong grid system, and rotated between 2 columns, 3 columns, and callouts that would appear in odd places. Here are a couple of examples of the old brand.
Old eBooks:
Old Product Spotlights:
Old Infographics:
The New Brand
Vaisala’s brand guidelines were still taking shape, with new components, icons, and references rolling out incrementally. While we had a strong foundation—updated typography, a new color palette, and initial templates—those templates represented an “ideal state” that hadn’t yet been tested against real-world content.
My challenge was to evolve the templates to account for edge cases like variable page lengths, heavier product imagery, and needs for additional pictograms to illustrate concepts.
eBook Template
Provided Page Designs
The eBook template we were given had 2 cover options, and only 4 interior page layout options. And, the options didn't nearly cover the types of layouts that we would need to accommodate for. In particular, there weren't any layouts that included product images.
My Additional Page Designs
I created a test eBook with some suggested new page designs. The client asked for a few edits, then approved the new designs. I added these pages to the template so all of our future designs could utilize the new page styles.
New eBooks
Now we were ready to start creating lots of eBooks. Here are a couple samples of eBooks I made:
Infographics
No infographic templates existed at the start of the project, so I developed a flexible system based on the emerging brand guidelines and reference examples from the brand library. This meant translating core brand principles—hard corners (no rounded edges), a structured base-and-tint color palette, and a strong emphasis on numeric data—into clear, repeatable design rules.
Provided Pictograms
The Brand Book provided 4 pictogram examples, and there was no further "library" given.
My Pictogram Library
I created all of the following pictograms, to create a library of our own, for use in infographics and eBooks:
Here are a few of the infographics that I designed:
Results
The client was extremely appreciative of all our hard work. They were able to start the new year with a bang, by launching their new brand—with the 65 assets I had either created personally, or art directed—front and center.