PRODUCT DESIGN, USER EXPERIENCE, BRANDING

IBM, Open Liberty

I was tasked with opening up a legacy IBM product to a new audience, through a rebrand that included a new website, interactive reference material, logo, merch, social media presence etc. After many rounds of review, end product is a fun, memorable and trustworthy brand.

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ROLE
Design & Branding lead
TEAM
8 Developers

3 Offering managers

1 project manager

1 design researcher

1 visual designer on a per case basis.
DELIVERABLES
Brand Identity: logo, brand book, voice & tone, etc.
1 net-new responsive website and documentation microsite
Other branded content: T-shirt designs, stickers, powerpoint template, etc.
LIVE SITE*
openliberty.io
*Another designer has since made updates that don’t reflect my original designs. To see that work, contact me for an InVision prototype.

The challenge

Users were asking for open source technology, and IBM needed to adapt to stay relevant. 

So, IBM decided to open up a legacy product, Websphere Liberty (a framework for building apps) - which meant essentially offering the key parts for free. 

However, using the iconic IBM brand wasn’t appropriate for the community we were trying to reach; we needed a completely new approach.
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Solution & impact

I designed, pitched, and executed a new brand identity for Open Liberty after extensively researching our target audience and market. I designed the web experience and information architecture for Open Liberty from scratch: a 7-page website and documentation microsite. I also created fun branded assets like t-shirt designs and stickers. 



These combined with my team’s efforts created a community of 40k users and garnered over a million downloads of Open Liberty since its launch in 2017.



Additionally, Open Liberty won IBM Hybrid Cloud’s 'Outstanding innovation Award' in 2017 and Indigo Design awards for 'UX, Interface & Navigation' and 'Branding' in 2019.

✨ Copyright 2020, Megan Mulholland