Hi there, today it’s Cláudia speaking. This blog post is about our journey designing and branding Bloco. We used an approach based on research and development, thinking about every detail. A process that included a lot of data, drafts, thinking and writing, putting all our ideas and intentions on paper. A journey that took around two months digging into our own minds and executing a plan.

Thinking about our own brand leads to a few important questions, before we starting to work on a design or concept. First, we need to uncover our motivation and goals, to look for the what, who and why? A little inspiration.

What is Bloco or what we want Bloco to be?

• A product studio with design and development
• Specialized in Android products
• Keep it a small team
• Solve conceptual and technical problems
• Work for clients and on our own projects
• With a focus on prototyping and validation of concepts

We’re a small team, passionate about developing good products. From working with startups and building our own products, we learned the hard way how a product development process should be. We like solving problems creatively, but we enjoy more making products people need and can use. If they have a remarkable experience with them, that’s the cherry on top.

And we didn’t build a studio only to implement our ideas. Our goal is to join other teams and find the best solutions together. Collaboration is in our DNA. We want bring clients and partners into the process, through a culture of openness and participation, that will benefit everything we do.

Who do we want to reach? What is our audience?

• Clients

  • Startups already with an initial version of their product (target: CEOs, CTOs)
  • Creative agencies that want to outsource development (target: account managers)
  • Established companies that want to develop a side-product (target: business-unit managers)
• Community
  • Technology peers: Android developers, designers, copy, photographers…
  • Business peers: other product development studios
  • Students: future developers, designers and marketeers. 

While clients are our direct audience, we also want to reach the community, our indirect audience. Knowledge shared is knowledge gained, and we love sharing and creating more value out of it. That’s why we created Android Talks and another event we’ll announce soon. 

Why are we different?

• Our beliefs and values:
  • People
  • Excellence
  • Sustainability
• Our development process:
  • More research upfront with all stakeholders
  • Validation: iterate on design and validation with prototypes
  • Design specifically for Android
  • Implement with quality and maintainability in mind
  • Together with the clients’ internal teams

Life is too short to build products nobody uses. We develop concepts and prototypes, before building the actual product, and validate them with clients. We validate value (if clients want to use it) and usability (if clients can use it), until we end up with a product worth building.

Then, with a validated concept, we can build a product to last. Using the best practices for process, architecture and testing, we build applications that you can maintain and grow with.

We work integrated with a client's team, making sure our work can be continued afterwards. We even to help recruiting a product development team.

We care a lot about people. Our main goal is having a multidisciplinary and gender-balanced team, in a healthy environment, where everyone feels rewarded. Creating impact in our society, while developing great products and skills, is the highest goal we can achieve.

What are our main goals?

• Build a multi-disciplinary team of around 5 people, that can handle all challenges of building a product:
  • Visual design
  • Copywriting
  • UI/UX
  • Product and project management
  • Front-end and back-end Android development
  • App marketing
  • Business development
• Develop our own product ideas
• Offer the team great working conditions and environment

Designing

1. Build a brand for Bloco that’s faithful to the way we see ourselves;
2. Build a brand through creative exploration, integrating design thinking to position and establish ourselves;
3. Make the process transparent, by involving everyone that will become part of the project and by sharing our tools; 
4. Find the brand values.

Framework exercises: If the brand was / The type of company / Beliefs and Values / Brand profiling.

Imagery, graphic references and drafts for the brand and website.

Conclusion

Branding, more than a visual result, is acting with consistency and integrity in everything we do. A logo is just a materialization of a brand, that condenses all of its characteristics and values.

Here's the logo that represents what Bloco stands for. It's up to us now to make in meaningful.