Brand & Product Redesign

I joined the redesign team as the representative from product, in collaboration with brand agency TMP and our marketing teams to bring our product experiences and marketing in alignment. Rather than treating the rebrand as a one-off creative exercise, the team structured the work as an evidence-gathering process. Later building a direction before rolling it into formal guidelines and my focus: Product surfaces.

The problem

Nutanix's existing visual identity leaned heavily on photography and had converged, stylistically, with several direct competitors. Internal audits during the process found that peer companies in the hybrid cloud and infrastructure space were using visually similar approaches. Heavy reliance on real-world photography, similar color logic making it hard for the brand to stand apart at a glance.

There wasn't an established illustration system at all, which limited how the brand could tell more human, story-driven narratives without defaulting to stock photography.

At the same time, any new direction had to work across a genuinely wide surface area. Website, product UI, social ads, print collateral, etc… Which meant the team couldn't just pick something that looked good in one context; it had to hold up as a system.

My role

As the lead representative for Visual Design & Design Systems at Nutanix (2022–2024). I was in charge of contributing product direction to define a cohesive brand direction that could scale from marketing into web and products.

Process & decision rationale

Rather than jumping straight to visual exploration, the team structured the work as a staged, evidence-gathering process before committing to a direction:

• Competitive and inspirational audits. Before generating anything original, we ran structured audits of how peer and aspirational brands used illustration, photography, and brand device systems. Examples were sorted into categories (people/characters/mascots, world-building, and data/process visualization) so the team could compare like with like rather than reacting to individual images in isolation.
• Structured voting, not opinion in a room. Instead of relying on the loudest voice in a meeting, the team used a dot-voting exercise. Every participant marked like or dislike on each reference example, then synthesized the results into written conclusions: which categories skewed positive, which felt too close to a competitor, which felt generic. This created a paper trail for why a direction was chosen, not just that it was chosen.
• Iteration against stated principles. Early creative directions were named and tested against brand personality traits, tone-of-voice pillars, and messaging pillars rather than judged purely on aesthetics. Directions that scored well on visual appeal but drifted from those criteria were cut or revised in later rounds.
• Cross-functional and cross-regional input — the process built in review sessions with regional and cross-functional stakeholders before finalizing direction, and again before rolling recommendations into formal brand guidelines.
• Once a direction converged, the work shifted from which concept we like to how this holds up as a system: testing the chosen approach across a tiered framework (hero-level executions, everyday/utility executions, and process/data visualizations) so the same idea could flex across very different use cases without looking inconsistent.

The final visual direction was product-informed work that became a core part of the brand system rather than an afterthought. Kacy wrote an Beyond the interface about the practical application of these into our customer test-drive experience.

Outcomes & evidence

The work took a couple of rounds, but we successfully released the redesign at Nutanix .NEXT 2023 in Chicago the company's first in-person global event since 2019. Our team focus on creating product documents and assets that for teams followed worldwide. Rollout continued in phases through 2024 web applications, product surfaces, and event environments with the refreshed brand system visible at Nutanix .NEXT 2024 in Barcelona as the company socialized its hybrid multi-cloud positioning.

Reflection

The process was key to a successful brand at this scale. Viewing different directions side by side, and the early contribution of several team, gave people ownership and helped conversations follow evidence instead of hierarchy. With a company this big, those structured processes are needed to drive alignment.