Salesloft was born out of the idea of adding sincerity to sales. The company is a passionate, vibrant, diverse, and inclusive organization that cares for its people and customers. We worked with the Salesloft team to identify their brand attributes as sincere, energetic, and best-in-class. Although "winning" is an important outcome for sales, we focused on "best-in-class" for the visual strategy to avoid coming off as insincere. “Best-in-class” is the attribute that guides our choices. “Winning” is the outcome that is conveyed through verbal identity.

In addition to the brand attributes, it was clear that Salesloft was built on a foundation of both passion and expertise — a balance that creates enduring relationships and measurable results. The incredible care that Salesloft extends to partners and buyers was so apparent, and we wanted to convey that next-level service in the new brand identity.

The Kion voice is honest, intelligent, and warm. Cloud management is a heady, complex, demanding thing. Kion’s voice guides people, sounding experienced, assured, and innovative, while also suggesting a lightness of spirit. "With us, this becomes easier." It’s a voice of sophistication, agility, and efficacy, and one that inspires customers to believe that they, too, can embody those qualities. This is an invitation to feel empowered.

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The Kion brand story aligns with the company’s purpose: “We help organizations thrive by redefining their experience in the cloud, eliminating manual effort, waste, and frustration so everyone can achieve its benefits.”

As our brand writer Idoia Gkikas wrote in a recent article, "When your story is aligned with your purpose, it becomes a touchpoint, a home base, a gut check that has the power to guide and reverberate through every outward expression of your organization."

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In addition to their voice and tone and brand story, we worked with the Kion team to craft messaging and positioning. With such a strong foundation, the Kion identity shines at every touchpoint.

The Kion mark, dubbed Lux, illuminates one’s road to cloud empowerment. Latin for light, it represents Kion’s powerful clarity in guiding customers, equipping them with the confidence and context they need to move forward. Now, they can thrive.

Lux’s lines draw the eye to its center point: a single path to success in the cloud environment. How fitting that, within its refraction, shapes form a monogram “K.” The journey ahead is made easy to follow through the strength of Kion, our cloud navigator.

Kion's system is made up of five elements: color, typography, pattern, the clouds, and photography. When viewed collectively, these elements provide the ultimate sense of agency and agility. We created a system to define how elements should be combined, and when.

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The visual language exhibits movement while instilling transparency. A mix between crisp geometrics and subtle organic shapes, clean typography, and a clear grid structure, this is a mature, energized evolution. The darker, richer colors evoke trustworthiness. Layers add depth, communicating a sense of transparency, trust, and openness.

Interactive work really starts to bring the Kion brand to life. A website is such an important touchpoint and frequently a customer's first experience with the brand, so we revisited our brand attributes of trusted, simple, and current when kicking off the interactive portion of the project.

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Working through content briefs and low-fidelity wireframes first allows us to make thoughtful decisions about the user's experience. Even small design choices serve an important function. Kion customer logos on the homepage generate trust. Clear page hierarchy helps the experience feel simple and intuitive. A video reinforces Kion differentiators in a current, compelling way.

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Through Focus Lab’s monthly retainer offering, we created an icon set to align with the brand, as well as designing additional pages to help flesh out the visual identity system. Thoughtfully approaching each piece of collateral through the lens of the brand system further strengthens identity across platforms, departments, and iterations.