Built with Webflow
Website and Brand Refresh for Cybersecurity Platform
Max Martinez
Refreshing a cybersecurity brand for enterprise growth
Risk Ledger helps organizations work together to identify and reduce cybersecurity risk across their supply chains.
Following its Series A, the company had a strong product, growing market credibility, and an ambitious vision—but its brand and website still felt closer to an early-stage startup. We set out to close that gap.
Role: Digital Designer
Scope: Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Brand Identity, UI/UX Design, Website Design, Webflow Development
Location: London, UK
Team: Linda Wang (Head of Marketing), Tom Baker (Marketing Manager), Chris Luenen (Content Marketing), Mathew Kerber (Visual Designer)
Timeline: May 2023 – Dec 2023
The Challenge: Making the digital presence match the business behind it
Risk Ledger had already earned the trust of major organizations and investors. The problem was perception.
Its existing identity and website were clean and approachable, but they lacked the confidence and depth expected from an enterprise cybersecurity company. At the same time, becoming more established could not mean becoming indistinguishable from a category filled with conservative blue brands and predictable security imagery.
The opportunity was to make Risk Ledger feel more mature without losing what made it different. And we had to move quickly. With the Series A announcement approaching, we had only a few months to revisit the identity, establish a stronger visual system, bring parts of the product into that system, and launch a new marketing website.
The homepage before the refresh
The product dashboard before the visual refresh
Research: Standing out without sacrificing trust
We started by studying the cybersecurity category alongside brands that communicate trust particularly well. The pattern was predictable: cool blues, restrained palettes, conservative typography, and familiar enterprise visual language. That familiarity creates trust—but it also creates sameness.
Risk Ledger needed enough category recognition to reassure enterprise buyers while retaining the more collaborative and progressive character at the heart of its product. That tension became the foundation for the visual exploration.
Visual references mapping trust, technology, and differentiation
Strategy: Evolving the brand, not replacing it
The early exploration ranged deliberately from safe to unconventional. We tested more technical directions, darker cyber aesthetics, warmer analog concepts, and flexible systems that mixed elements from each.
The exercise made one thing clear: Risk Ledger did not need to throw away its identity. Its existing mark already had recognition and a meaningful relationship to the product. The stronger move was to preserve that equity and improve everything around it. Instead of reinventing the brand, we would sharpen it.
Aligning positioning, audience, and visual direction
Early logo explorations around networks and connections
Testing how far the existing mark could evolve
Contrasting directions used to pressure-test the visual identity
The selected direction bringing the final identity elements together
Identity: More precise. Still Risk Ledger.
The refreshed system introduced greater consistency while staying recognizably connected to the original brand. We refined the geometry of the logo, introduced Manrope as a versatile digital typeface, built the system around black and white, and used bright turquoise as a distinctive accent rather than defaulting to category blue.
Line-based iconography, network-inspired patterns, product UI, and a more human photography direction gave the identity enough range to move between enterprise credibility and the collaborative nature of the platform. The result was intentionally restrained at its core and expressive when needed. That flexibility became important as the brand moved across product, marketing, content, events, and sales materials.
Testing the refreshed identity in real-world contexts
Exploring photography, color, patterns, and composition
Refined logo lockups for different applications
A consistent line-based icon system for product and marketing
Candid, human photography with a bright natural feel
Turning the network model into a recognizable visual motif
Making technical ideas feel more human and approachable
A modular pattern inspired by the network and logo geometry
Product: Letting the product tell the story
Risk Ledger's platform is the strongest proof of its value, but screenshots alone were not telling the story. We created a visual approach for presenting product UI more deliberately across marketing. Interfaces were isolated, simplified, and composed into reusable visuals that could highlight specific capabilities without the noise of raw screenshots.
The network view became especially important. It made Risk Ledger's key differentiator tangible: organizations are not simply managing supplier risk independently—they are participating in a connected security network. That gave us a product story that could lead the website visually instead of relying on cybersecurity abstractions.
Bringing the refreshed visual system into the product
Reusable product compositions built from simplified UI elements
Website: Turning credibility into a clearer journey
The website needed to do more than look more polished. It needed to make a complex offering easier to understand, establish trust quickly, and consistently move qualified buyers toward one primary action: booking a demo. We reorganized the experience around those priorities.
The homepage leads with the product and network proposition, supported immediately by recognizable organizations already using the platform. Solutions explain the major use cases through product visuals rather than long blocks of copy. Customer stories, reviews, trust marks, and industry proof appear throughout the journey instead of being isolated on a single page. And a reusable component system keeps the experience consistent across services, resources, company, careers, and conversion pages.
The visual system and UX were designed together so the new brand would not simply decorate the website—it would help the product make more sense.
Establishing hierarchy and conversion paths before styling
Product storytelling
Leading with product, network value, social proof, and conversion
Visualizing the breadth of industries across the network
Pairing solution pillars with product UI and supporting features
Making onboarding feel simpler and less intimidating
Reinforcing the proposition with a high-contrast transition
Trust and conversion
Turning customer success into tangible proof
Adding independent social proof from third-party reviews
Making the primary conversion action impossible to miss
Building a system that could scale
Extending navigation with trust signals and secondary actions
Organizing a growing content architecture into clear paths
A repeatable hero system creating consistency across pages
A resource hub with its own navigation and newsletter path
An editorial template designed for readability and sharing
Combining customer identity, storytelling, and proof
Translating the network idea into a dimensional brand moment
Bringing the team forward through candid photography
Keeping the primary conversion path focused and unmistakable
Reusable components adapting across different page types
Combining customer stories, recognizable logos, and key metrics
Making approved brand assets easy to find and use
Separating contact paths by intent while prioritizing booking
Development: From design direction to launch
I built the site after completing the visual direction and core page designs. Working across both design and implementation made it possible to refine layouts directly in the browser, handle responsive behavior without an additional development handoff, and move quickly as content and requirements evolved.
The build also established reusable CMS structures and components so the marketing team could continue publishing and expanding the site after launch. Performance, responsive behavior, semantic structure, SEO fundamentals, and social assets were treated as part of the finished product rather than post-launch tasks.
Preserving the homepage hierarchy on smaller screens
Translating the navigation system into a compact mobile experience
Keeping hero hierarchy consistent across screen sizes
Reflowing complex content for better mobile readability
Extending the visual system into shared links
Outcome: Ready for the next stage
The refreshed brand and website shipped within weeks of the Series A announcement. Risk Ledger now had a digital presence that better reflected its product, experience, and enterprise credibility—while retaining the distinctiveness of the brand it had already built. The new system also gave the team a stronger foundation for product marketing, events, content, and future growth.
The refreshed identity in use during a Risk Ledger presentation
"Max executed a new website with new brand and product positioning in record time, enabling the company to communicate with clients and prospects more clearly than ever before."
— Linda Wang, Head of Marketing
"Max's skillset is so all-encompassing. From initial brainstorming and brand building to wireframing and website development, he was able to do it all—and made the entire process 10x smoother."
— Tom Baker, Marketing Manager
Ambitious company. Compressed timeline. One connected system.
Brand, product storytelling, website design, and development moved together instead of becoming separate projects. That was ultimately the advantage: we could make a meaningful change without turning the refresh into a year-long rebrand.
Media by Yuri Arcurs.
Full case study: https://www.maxmartinez.com/work/risk-ledger
Like this project
Posted Jun 12, 2024
Refreshing Risk Ledger's cybersecurity brand for enterprise growth after its Series A. I led brand strategy, identity, product UI, web design, and Webflow development, shipping the new brand and website within weeks of the funding announcement.
Likes
0
Views
28
Clients
Risk Ledger
