YakChat

Branding, Visual Identity, Multi-platform UI/UX and design system, website design. By James Ward.

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Bringing SMS into the modern business world and enabling companies to communicate effectively with their customers.

YakChat are the world-leader of integrated SMS functionality for workplace comunication apps such as Microsoft Teams and Webex. They enhance and extend the communication and collaboration power of these apps with interactive SMS, integrating 2-way SMS for companies and their customers. YakChat approached me to help create a brand that stands out in the space and offers an attractive and modern B2B solution to potential customers. They were also looking for help with designing their multi-platform messaging and admin apps - to make their complex and feature-rich products intuitive and easy to use.

To bring the B2B brand to life, I pushed the company away from the monotonous sea of blues and greens used by their competitors and other messaging apps and focused on injecting personality into what was already a fun and quirky business name. The idea behind the logo was to create a "Yak" out of the "Chat" and form an illustration of a yak character composed of three chat bubbles. The resulting icon is simple, but memorable and effective. The color palette we landed on was confident, visually striking and boundary-pushing for the marketplace, creating graphics that stand out, and an impression that lasts. The typographic voice for the company as well as the YakChat wordmark were crafted from the incredibly apt font GT Ultra by GrilliType. The beautiful "flicks" that formed the arms and tails of connected instantly with the logo icon and helps carry on the visual language of speech bubbles wherever it is used.

For the YakChat products, an intuitive interface was created through prototyping, research and experimentation. These visuals were backed by a coherent set of rules and principles as well as core component set defined in The Yak Design System I created. Once the base design and design system was formulated I worked closely with the development team to help bring the product from conception all the way through and beyond market launch. I used my frontend development skills to build the YakChat iOS and Android app as well as help create the design system component set the rest of the products were built on.

For illustrations that helped imbue personality into both the brand and product, I worked closely with the brilliant El Ozz