Full brand & product redesign for Vetster

Product Designer

Product Strategist

Design Systems

Figma

Google Docs

Miro

Vetster

Detailing the rebranding and refactoring of Vetster's website, web-apps and mobile apps for both pet parents and veterinarians.

With a change from acute care to ongoing maintenance, Vetster was looking to change it's target audience in 2023. We knew that in order to keep users coming back to the app we needed to provide value outside of those emergencies and urgent moments that drive pet parents to a veterinary clinic.

Background

Vetster connects pet owners to thousands of licensed veterinarians ready to provide the best online vet services through video chat appointments 24/7. We help people book the veterinary professional of their choice during acute care moments! We aim to give pet parents peace of mind, and allow them to leave appointments feeling assured that we are providing their pet with the best care possible. Post appointment, pet parents receive their medical record and prescription (regional/vet permitting).

With a change in our products & services at Vetster, we felt we needed to update our company identity to better match ongoing pet wellness and maintenance. Moving away from acute care would allow us to better serve pet healthcare long-term, and make a real difference in the industry. We wanted to position Vetster as the home of pet health.

Our project team

Design

Lead: Director of Product Design, 2 Senior Product Designers, 1 Int. Product Designer (Growth)

Product

Lead: Chief Product Officer, 1 Senior Product Manager

Marketing

Lead: Director of Marketing, 1 Marketing Manager, 1 Graphic Designer

Engineering

Lead: Engineering Manager, 1 Front End Developer, 1 Mobile Developer

Problem statement

As a marketing or design employee at Vetster, I find that the current branding and design are outdated in 2023 and no longer resonate with the company or the evolving market. Additionally, the branding does not accurately represent new company values or mission, and it's time for a change to better align with the company's vision for the future.

Objective

Vetster embarked on a rebrand and refresh exercise, starting in late 2022. As we began to expand on our product and services offering, we needed to update our branding to be more in-line with the kind of company we were becoming.

Our target audience is millennial consumers, but our research showed that the typical person engaging pet telehealth is older and wealthier. Our challenge was to develop a bold, friendly brand that appealed to young buyers without alienating these older buyers who might also need our product.

We decided to engage a design agency to work on some of these elements, as we did not have the resources internally, with everything else going on. My role, as project lead, was to ensure that the design agency and Vetster were on the same page, create the project roadmap, and ensure that our delivery teams had something in their backlog.

Colour palette

Building a colour palette to create a meaningful user experience within Vetster.

Our starting point was to take a look at our current colour palette, and see what kind of updates we might need to make. We took our main two brand colours and worked to make them accessible, whilst still keeping our brand personality at the forefront.

Rebrand roadmap & timeline

Leading the work for the rebranding and ensuring alignment across the org

1. Planning & preparation Understanding the goals we had for the rebranding project was important to determine our next steps. We needed to understand the current thoughts and feelings surrounding our brand as-is

2. Project clarity First stop, stakeholder interviews. We formed a class collaborative project team and co-ordinated under the RACI model, before aligning on next steps

3. Determine new visuals We aligned on a large rebrand of Vetster as an app and as a company. We did choose to keep the core of our product; the purple and pink. We put an emphasis on accessibility

4. Align with org Aligned the project internally. Ensured we had KCS articles and training materials ready for each department. Engineering needed to understand how the flow of work would happen, and our C-suite wanted to have a chance to give their opinions via a design review.

5. Launch to user base Decided to plan a phased approach for the project to compliment the current project work happening on the pod level. The foundational pieces like type, colour, spacing, navigation, and iconography were the most important. Utilized a new design system to help us remain cohesive.

6. Post-launch support Since we chose a phased approach, I wanted to provide ongoing support to the org. I asked for 5-10 mins in both sprint planning and retro to be solely around the rebrand work, and took some time every month at our town hall for Q&A.

Branding workshop

Facilitation to determine the way we think about Vetster as a brand, and the words we associate with it

As a group of internal stakeholders, we worked through several questions about the brand, such as:

What do we stand for?

What is our mission? Our vision, purpose or values?

How do we want to communicate?

What is our tone? Our voice, personality and messaging?

What do our products and services say about us?

What are our visuals? What about our content?

Using the results from our workshops, we defined a palette of colours we should focus on. In order to be friendly, trust-worthy, comforting, professional and knowledgable - we landed on three bold primary colours.

Solution

Building a visual identity that incorporates vibrant colours, playful imagery, and bold typography; creating a friendly and approachable aesthetic

We were able to produce a new set of brand guidelines that we feel really encompass where Vetster is going. We chose to keep a nod to the past by keeping our original purple and pink brand colours, but made the decision to use these as accent colours only, and tweak the saturation slightly so they are more accessible.

View the new brand guidelines