Fullstack Academy Brand OverHaul

Getting Stakeholder Buy-in

As a scrappy start-up Fullstack Academy was in need of a major brand refresh to keep up with competition and enter a new era of serving students nationwide and across tech industries. The engineering focused founders needed a way to understand how vital a brand refresh would be to the success of the company.

I created this slide along with the explanation of “design debt” as a comparison to technical debt, a concept the founders would be familiar with. Knowing that as the company grew, these issues would only need a larger investment to correct, helped create the executive buy-in needed for the rebrand project.

Selecting a Partner

Our next step in creating a cohesive brand overhaul was to select a strategic agency partner. From a thorough RFP and interview process, the team selected Focus Lab. I served as their main point of contact and guided the team through design reviews, delivering discovery materials, and overall project coordination.

Brand Architecture

Fullstack Academy went from three separate disaggregated brands to being the clear parent brand of their many different programs and partnerships. We knew we had to bring the brands together to leverage the brand equity and recognition Fullstack had gained over the years. What resulted was a brand family with logos and visual languages that were the right balance of distinct but connected to each other.

Facilitating Feedback

Many stakeholders and team members were not accustomed to working with creatives or giving design feedback. I created a process for guiding feedback and ensured that the Focus Lab team received constructive feedback in a timely manner.

Roll Out and announcement

Working across teams and departments I created a process for updating all assets with our branding. This included a large website redesign, presentation decks, ad campaigns and more. Our team worked content frameworks and marketing plans for content writers to create content against as well.

Post our announcement I uphold our brand guidelines and design standards for any new assets. We continue to see improved performance and sentiment for the brand post launch. In the year following the rebrand Fullstack broke their own records for most enrolled students.