Oddbee — Digital Hive
Over the last year, the Oddbee Team has been working on our own rebranding. It’s been a thoughtful journey of self-discovery, creative exploration, crafting and coding that has led us to a better understanding of who we are as a company and made us closer as a team.
Back in 2014, I got together with three business partners to start a design agency. At that time, we were in a very different place; we were young, ambitious, excited and had limited experience in the business of design. We didn’t have a plan, positioning, or a clear vision of where we were headed – just a vague idea that we wanted to make cool shit along with a tonne of enthusiasm.
Initially we didn’t have much to show the world as a company, so we designed the first Oddbee website as a portfolio piece to demonstrate what we were capable of. The plan was a success – Oddbee V.1. got featured in design blogs, won minor awards, and gave us some credibility on the web. The little yellow airplane fired up its engine and took off.
Oddbee V1 didn’t fly far. Within the first 2 years I separated with my business partners, each for their own reason, and continued a long and lonely flight, singing the freelancer’s blues. Project after project I was painstakingly building reputation and growing the client base. Over time a network of talented people formed around me, many of whom would go on to become trusted studio partners, collaborators and later Oddbee employees.
7 years later – we have built a solid distributed team that are genuinely passionate about the work they do. The bee has grown up to a hive. If our first site was meant to show off our skills – now it’s the time to let our clients shine. We designed our new brand and website to take the passenger seat – minimalistic, simple and approachable.
Process
When we were working on the new brand for Oddbee our main goal was to develop a simple modern visual identity that would reflect the studio positioning and vision for the future while paying homage to its history.
The solution was creating a simple logo mark that would stand the test of time and keep its meaning in future iterations of the identity. It must have been related to bees, but not show them literally. The word ‘bee’ in the company name is not about the insect, it’s about hard work and resilience. In the end the logo included the following attributes of the bee: the stripes, the hexagonal shape, and the hive. The winning design clearly reflected the company slogan – “Digital Hive”. The wordmark features a modern grotesque font that shows the spirit of the era of global digitization. I think the logo is great! With the help of animation, we brought the design to life and made it more human. The studio is, first of all, about the people! Real, genuine people, that work together in one hive. In our case – a digital hive.
Our clients are purpose-driven companies that, just like Oddbee, survived their trial by fire. Having gone through the initial validation they’ve come to the point where they are ready to compete on the word stage. Our job is to help them look the part. We brand and rebrand startups and design websites that will take them to new heights.
We stay lean, travel light and work with great people, no matter where they are in the world. Day in and day out, together with our clients, who often feel like part of the team, we chase the future.
