To evolve and become Smartly, a modern, accessible, and friendly brand and design system was needed. It had to be easy and simple, but have a bit of personality, too. Our challenge was to help SmartPayroll evolve in a way that retained their existing customer base but encouraged those customers to take up the new features of Smartly. And there was an opportunity to attract new customers from previously untapped industries and markets, including startups and small to medium businesses.
The new Smartly brand has simplicity and friendliness at its core. We developed a new logo mark of a stylised thumbprint made of interconnected paths and we paired it with a rounded and friendly wordmark. Together these elements represent the cooperative customer solutions that makeup Smartly’s DNA.
Smartly’s human side was further emphasised with a new photography direction that showcases everyday Kiwis doing work together and penguin illustrations that inject personality and humour.
We gave Smartly a new colour palette with a distinctive green as the hero—a colour they could own in the payroll category. And topped it off with new tone of voice principles to ensure Smartly’s communications are consistently simple, straightforward, and friendly.
