March 2024: Introducing Polar Updates

Hello and a warm welcome to all our avid readers, designers, developers and startup founders alike.

We're thrilled to unveil something special to you today: Polar Updates, our brand-new web-based newsletter. Here at Polar Hedgehog, we're always seeking innovative ways to share our journey, insights, and the magic behind our designs. With Polar Updates, we're taking a giant leap forward.

The shift to a web format opens up a world of possibilities for us as designers. It allows us the freedom to incorporate animations and showcase our work in its full glory—something that was simply not feasible with email. Through this platform, we aim to bring you closer to the nuances of our projects, offer deep dives into our design process, and share valuable tips tailored for designers, developers and startups.

Let’s start.

This edition's "Project Spotlight" shines on our branding project for Bananaz, a cutting-edge change management solution designed to enhance the agility and confidence of engineering teams. Bananaz stands out for its ability to compare schematic designs, identifying changes with precision, supported by AI to delve into blueprints for actionable insights and diverse reporting.

In designing the Bananaz brand, we drew inspiration from the precision and clarity of engineering drawings, adopting a visual language that combines outline lines, light shades, and the thoughtful application of color to emphasize key elements. The logo encapsulates the essence of comparison and is ingeniously crafted to represent the letter 'b', symbolizing the brand's core functionality.

Our approach was to tell the comprehensive story of Bananaz's impact on the engineering process through our main illustration. It depicts the journey from the initial concept to the final product, illustrating how Bananaz facilitates each stage—comparison, approval, and collaboration—within a unified, intelligent system.

We're excited to celebrate the launch of MiXi's new website and branding, a testament to our fruitful collaboration with this forward-thinking Finnish organization.

Congratulations to the MiXi team for this significant leap forward in advancing a circular economy. We're proud to partner with such visionary clients and look forward to continuing our journey together, pushing the boundaries of innovation and sustainability.

For circular startups eager to make a difference, Polar Hedgehog is here to translate your vision into compelling designs that resonate and inspire change. Let's craft the future, together.

Thrilled to feature a piece that's close to our design hearts: "Lottie Animations in Webflow CMS: A Step-by-Step Guide." During the redesign of our website, especially the 'Work' page, we set out to encapsulate the essence of each client's brand through custom Lottie animations. However, we hit a snag - Webflow CMS doesn't natively accommodate Lottie files. Undeterred, we forged a path to seamlessly incorporate these animations into our designs. Our latest blog post is a comprehensive guide detailing the workaround we developed. Whether you're a designer, developer, or simply a Webflow enthusiast, this guide equips you with the knowledge to elevate your web projects with the dynamic flair of Lottie animations. Dive in to discover how you can bring a new level of interactivity and personality to your Webflow sites.

In this month's "Worthy Mention," we spotlight the strategic acquisition of Oxeye by GitLab, a landmark move that promises to significantly bolster GitLab's SAST (Static Application Security Testing) capabilities. But before this pivotal transition, our journey with Oxeye over the span of two years stands as a testament to the enduring impact of thoughtful design. From the initial branding to multiple website redesigns, and the creation of dynamic marketing materials for booths and one-pagers, our partnership with Oxeye has been a comprehensive and evolving collaboration. Our constant connection through every design need that arose allowed us to deeply integrate Oxeye's mission and technology into a cohesive visual identity.

As Oxeye steps into a new chapter with GitLab, their unique strengths in providing precise security findings and the ability to trace vulnerabilities from "code to cloud" will now complement GitLab's mission to advance application security. This acquisition not only signifies a significant leap in the capabilities of GitLab's security offerings but also serves as a compelling example of how our design work with clients like Oxeye can play a crucial role in their growth and success. The synergy between GitLab's and Oxeye's expertise in security is poised to empower organizations to navigate their digital transformation journeys more smoothly, marking a significant milestone in the industry's approach to application security and compliance.

Let’s take a closer look at our design journey with Sodot, a pioneer in MPC infrastructure, tasked with the rebranding that included refining their logo and creating a new graphic language. This language, comprised of layered graphical elements, each represents a different aspect of Sodot's comprehensive services, from basic to intricate, culminating in the vibrant layer representing Sodot.

The hero section on Sodot's website, a key outcome of our design, visually narrates the layered complexity of Sodot's solutions. It depicts the transition from basic UI elements to advanced blockchain layers, and finally, to the sophisticated cryptography protections like seed phrase, HSM, and Multisig. Initially presented in grayscale to symbolize their standalone limitations, these layers are transformed by the colorful secrets layer, which not only adds vibrancy but also symbolizes complete and robust security solutions.

Throughout this process, our design ethos was guided by the principles of accuracy, subtlety, and cleanliness, especially in the application of color. The use of a controlled color palette, with gradients and purples, was deliberate—to enhance the narrative without overwhelming it. This design choice was crucial in reinforcing Sodot's core messages of security, seamless integration, and ease of use, ensuring that the visual language complements the technological sophistication Sodot offers.

In this month's "Blast from the Past," we dive into the creation of Cynerio's distinctive brand language, a project that was deeply rooted in comprehensive research on medical devices. Our focus was on capturing the essence of these devices' visibility and their interconnections within healthcare settings. We developed a multi-layered graphic representation that spanned from overarching hospital environments to the minutiae of individual devices, blending detailed and abstract elements to shed light on the complexity and potential vulnerabilities of medical technologies.

Key to Cynerio's branding were the brand characters: Switch and Jepro. Switch, with his illuminating eyes, symbolizes Cynerio's core attributes of presence, visibility, and protection. In contrast, Jepro embodies the negative forces of attackers and malicious threats, against which Cynerio safeguards. Together, they bring to life the brand's mission in a visually engaging way. The grid backdrop represents the vast network of medical devices, emphasizing the interconnected and data-rich ecosystem Cynerio operates within, highlighting their role in securing and managing medical device operations against potential threats.