Iconic Logo, Dynamic Layout Engine, Bright Colors, and WAY More

This blog post is part of our introduction of the New SquadCast.

With our vision to expand the ways in which SquadCast amplifies collaboration for the creators that we serve, it was clear our design process needed to evolve. Collaboration is at the core of our culture and for this massive reimagining of our customer’s experience we partnered with the talented design team at SixZero. We worked through the process of research, interviews, refinements, A/B testing, mockups, wireframes, and more refinements –- all with the keen attention to detail needed to produce a remarkably fresh experience for our customers. To focus the team when making big decisions, the following set of principles served as our guide.

  1. Increase confidence
  2. Empower professional growth
  3. Accessibility is good design
  4. Guide, don’t crowd
  5. Foster conversations

Iconic Logo

Our design team started with our logo mark, making several functional and aesthetic improvements. For function, we needed our logo to communicate more effectively on smaller screens, like iPhones, and across color pallets of varying contrast. For aesthetics, we opened up the negative space, standardized the line weight, and rounded off sharp edges. We started rolling out our new logo in January and the community is already showing some love.

Dynamic Layout Engine

Recording with 10ten collaborators while screen sharing on an iPad or with one person on a huge TV on a professional video set never looked so good. With features like Hide Yourself and Pinning, everyone has full control to customize how the Studio looks for them. The Studio’s new Sidebar nudges the conversation a bit to the right instead of covering the Talent’s faces, preventing distractions while providing quick access to Recordings, Participants, and Chat.

Bold Color Pallet

We’ve updated and expanded our color pallet in past versions, as the first Cloud Studio with light and dark modes. But this time we’ve gone further than ever before. The impacts of color on experience are huge and our application of color throughout the New Studio focused on accessibility and added more accent colors. We increased the contrast to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, by making our light mode lighter and our dark mode darker.

Typography Refresh

We at SquadCast are some proud typography nerds, so we geeked out at the opportunity for a type refresh. Our past treatments applied Raleway to our logo type and headings while Ubuntu was reserved for body copy. Our pursuit of a new logo inspired us to ask similar questions of our type treatment. Answers came from selecting and transitioning to the Mori Gothic typeface from the designers at Inari Type.

“Mori is a versatile and sophisticated gothic sans serif inspired by contemporary Japanese design, best suited for editorial, graphic design and branding.” – Caio Kondo

Expanded Iconography

While we love typography, there is very little text within our app because our experience is focused on empowering conversations and creativity, not consumption. Therefore our design communicates primarily through custom designed iconography. Reimagining our Studio’s experience warranted several new icons to communicate effectively for the likes of Backstage, SquadShots, and Workflow.

Performance and Speed

Speed matters to SquadCasters in several key ways like how quickly media files render and how quickly Guests join Recording Sessions. The New Studio feels (and is measurably) much, much faster speeding up your production workflow.