LaunchDarkly

Founded 2014
Private
Series D
$330.3M

Client Detail

LaunchDarkly is a feature management platform that allows software development teams to deliver to their customers.

Collaborator Portfolio Project

In their 3rd year as a startup, the SaaS platform LaunchDarkly saw an opportunity to redefine how teams build software.

Work

Creative/Art Direction
Branding
Messaging
Marketing Strategy & Design
Website Design
Advertising Design
Content Strategy & Design

Brand Strategy

Working from the insight that the platform had changed how their early developer fan base thought about software development, and the consistent feedback about stress reduction in their work, we set out to create a new category of SaaS products. One that would change how transform how team build software.

We called it ‘feature management’.

To position LaunchDarkly as the leader in this category creation, we had to build a strong brand and messaging to built trust and show that the startup was here to stay.

Focusing on the human impact of software development mishaps, breakages, service interruptions, we developed messaging speaking directly to the developer first, progressively moving towards a team and enterprise-focused messaging.

Visual Strategy

LaunchDarkly’s name comes from the concept of ‘dark launching’ which embodies the experience of developers having to deploy and release code at 3am or on the weekends in case the code broke the user experience. Which was exactly that–launching in the dark.

This spoke directly to the developer pain the SaaS platform was solving.

Their team was also fans of Star Wars, NASA, and all things space exploration-related, and was present in their decor, humor, and activities.

The concept of limitless exploration was also closely tied to the product. With it’s features, LaunchDarkly let team experiment with the wildest ideas without the risks.

We wanted to honor the LaunchDarkly beginnings and their spirit.

We kept the original brand mark, modernizing it, to stay true to our original developer fans base.

We built a strong brand language surrounding it.

One that connected with our existing supporters, that communicated maturity, trust, and playfulness, and one that helped us reach the Forbes 100 Cloud list and raise $330.3 million in VC funding.

Messaging Strategy

The messaging and communication was going to be clear and straight to the point. No fluff. No BS.

We focused on making software development faster, easier, less risky. So the entire team can sleep at night.

The details and care for the brand would convey trust and security.

The visuals would be supportive, relatable, and engaging.

A developer-first product

The user experience for LaunchDarkly was a challenging one. We had to think like a developer, plan for scale, and take into consideration that the information hierarchy of the existing product did not match a organizational mental model.

Through much research, user interviews, and playing with different models, we progressively helped design a dev tool that would stay true to the developer experience, could be used by enterprise teams, and had complex features which helped LaunchDarkly stay the top leader for feature management.

Oh, and we created a conference!

Keeping the same space and exploration theme, the concept for Trajectory was a place where LaunchDarkly users would come to learn how other companies build software using the service, and learn how to power-use the platform.

From strategy and concept, to naming, and branding, we set out to build a small conference that would bring the best software developers together.

LaunchDarkly’s home, Oakland, CA, had always been a strong prideful element of the company. What better place than the Oakland Museum to host the event which featured our favorite local vendors, and organizations.