IBM Cognos - Darryl Mascarenhas

BRAND DESIGN

IBM Cognos

↳ Challenge
The Cognos® AI-powered analytics platform is capable of performing a wide range of complex tasks that help make sense of various types of data. However, the extensive set of features and use cases can be challenging to simplify, making the overall product difficult to comprehend.

Summary

IBM® Cognos® Analytics is a web-based integrated business intelligence suite developed by IBM. It offers a range of tools for reporting, analytics, scorecarding, and event and metric monitoring.

As the ECD, I worked closely with both Ogilvy and IBM to lead a small but highly skilled team consisting of a strategist/writer, art director, and two designer/animators. Our goal was to explore, develop, and bring to life the visual brand for IBM's Cognos Analytics platform.

Within a span of 2.5 weeks, we created a visual representation of the platform's core functionality, establishing the Cognos brand. This was followed by two additional 3-day sprints for refinement before the final hand-off.

Role:
Strategy & Positioning
Brand Design
Motion Strategy + Direction
Cross platform Implementation

Opportunity / Challenge

Our main objective was to design a flexible brand system that elegantly communicates how data can be used to amplify BI (business intelligence) with the Cognos® platform.

Insights gathered from stakeholder interviews revealed that the target audience is savvy and capable of understanding how to utilize Cognos® features to improve business operations. However, this audience is also very busy and would benefit from a quick understanding of the key features and benefits of the new platform.

Brand Principles

A competitive audit revealed that IBM® Cognos® Analytics has several key advantages over its competitors:

1. It ensures higher data integrity by requiring experienced data personnel to use the platform. This results in extremely precise data management.

2. It offers a wide range of features and tools for running complex modes of reporting and visualizing data.

3. It excels in handling complex and large data sets, providing unbiased insights.

The Ogilvy and IBM team aimed to make Cognos® seamlessly integrate with IBM's wide range of products and services. They decided to use the IBM Plex typeface and the color palette specified in the master brand color guide.

Identity Design

We developed the Cognos® brand identity using IBM's Plex typeface. We enhanced Ogilvy's initial sketch to create a logo that conveyed a more "active" feel.

↳ Final Logo/s

Additional Brand Elements

Motion Principles

By leveraging all of our brand principles, we developed a collection of animations that represent the different functionalities offered on the Cognos® platform.

Reveal

Uncover

Think

Data Sets

Analyze

Insights

Focus

Discover

Explore

Visualize

↳ Motion Principles and Behaviours

Revealing the unseen
Uncovering insights
Exploring data
Data sets
Visualizations based on user input
Intuitively explore datasets
Analyze
Intuitively filter

Campaign: Motion Application