At Ringer Sciences, we love data, but we also love a good story, and we know that data and stories go together (and aren’t mutually exclusive). We know data-informed storytelling can paint a picture and bring audiences along for the ride, but we also wanted to tell a more powerful story for ourselves—visually. So, we’ve redesigned our visual identity to better capture where we are, and where we’re going. Ringer Sciences was founded on the power of analytics and data science coming together to help inform decisions, provide meaningful insights, and help reach the right audiences with the right stories and experiences at the right time. Our initial visual identity story highlights the entrepreneurial spirit of our founder, Yash Gad, as he essentially designed it himself. In his own words, “the approach was pretty simple—the hexagon shape was one that I could easily generate and manipulate on my own, but to me, it represented a couple of things that were core principles. On one level, it evoked the strong structure of one of the foundational organic molecules —a nod to the science which literally is in our name, and it honors much of the work we do, especially with healthcare industry clients (an industry made possible by science).” The previous visual also paid tribute to evoke a kind of “collective intelligence” like the kind we see in nature with bees. Yash explains: “It was also intentional that the hexagon served a double purpose, giving a nod to the kind of honeycombs you’d find in a beehive—we believe in the wisdom of crowds and the power of the kind of conversational data you find in online communities which sometimes function as a collective”.
When I joined Ringer Sciences in November 2023, I waited a few weeks before asking how committed we were to the previous brand identity and logo. To me, there seemed to be a disconnect between how our story is evolving along with the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into so much of the work that the firm is doing, whether that is developing a CLM (Custom Language Model) for organizations or automating parts of the analytics to insight generation process leveraging AI. We’re even getting into content generation thanks to generative AI and prompt engineering—in my mind, a theme kept emerging that centered around the best of human intuition collaborating with AI. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Yash was open to the idea, and with that, we went to work. The first step included a design brief that captured much of the above dynamics, and made the case for how we’d approach updating the logos. We then brought on a trusted designer I had worked with in the past (I used AI to generate some rough approaches and used it as part of the design briefing process—but wanted the designer to lead the interpretation of the concept). Next came including Ringer’s leadership team as part of the decision-making process. I’ve found that when it comes to design and creativity—the best approach is both highly collaborative but also curated and guided. It’s an exercise of both holding hands and balancing objectivity with recommendations.
With this team, we first narrowed down a conceptual direction, which my colleague Garrett Bond described as “therapy”. With alignment on concept—we then explored different visual explorations of the “mark” of the identity. We then landed on a final treatment for the mark. After this, we methodically aligned on color choices, combinations, as well as fonts. The rest was pretty much tweaked, and before we knew it—we were in agreement on the final, which was selectively shown around to see how people responded. It passed the test.
Ringer’s updated visual tells a very deliberate story. The mark is suggestive of human-technology collaboration—the work we’re doing in AI Analytics. It’s not meant to be literal in translation—so by design, there’s a “squiggle” vs. an obvious brain, and the lines and dashes are also somewhat abstract, yet designed to communicate “tech”. There’s a highlight in the middle of the mark/tech lines (light blue), which is very important to us. This is where Ringer delivers on our value proposition—it is through this partnership between our “Ringers” and technology, like AI—that we find the signal in the noise—that actionable intelligence, key insight or idea that inspires building a conversational experience like a CLM. Lastly, we wanted to honor the previous identity, born from our founder’s entrepreneurial spirit. So, if the shape feels something like a beehive or is reminiscent of a hexagon—that is by design.
That’s our story behind the re-design, and we’re looking forward to the increased collaboration between humans and AI—in fact, we’re helping build it.