Agency
Thrillworks
Lead Strategist
Creative direction
Rethinking Canada’s once flagship brand.
At the dawn of the smartphone, BlackBerry was the dominant force and had a stronghold of the marketshare. As years passed, new competitors began to emerge and over time their product offering took a pivot. While their brand is still recognized as a smartphone company by consumers, the reality is they actually license to third party production. Today, BlackBerry is a leader in enterprise software and security.
As the business shifted and the website took shape, it offered a lot of content but was difficult to navigate and understand. Visually it lacked consistency, and with endless brands and products represented, it was a real challenge for users to get an understanding of what was being offered, or find specific information they were searching.
The goal was to re-establish BlackBerry to a tier-1 brand, with bold positioning, a clear product offering, distinct visual expression and an enhanced user experience.
The Strategy
Alignment to strategic foundations
- Develop standardized approach to page development
- Optimized for mobile
- Meet accessibility guidelines
- Implementation across BlackBerry business units
- Organize content so it’s easy for the user to understand and navigate
- Visual queues for content types to help identify what type of page the user is on
- Optimize content structure to educate user while directing them to actionable outcomes
- Standardized layouts & web parts
- Built in flexibility
The Strategy
User path
- A focus on simplicity
- A clear structure, moderate visual clues and easily recognizable targets
- Focus user’s attention to relevant content
- Make use of effective writing
- Facilitate user engagement
- Clear calls to action
The Strategy
Standardize how content is presented
- Better organized content
- Ensure content is accessible and easily digestible
- Create consistency in what information is presented
- Visual cohesiveness site wide
System
Imagery
- Clean, light imagery with purpose
- Product, lifestyle & contextual imagery
- Natural lit, cool temperature and small depth of field
- Abstract images to convey concepts
- Gradient overlay on header images
System
Iconography
- Colourized iconography
- Highlighted feature with a darker tone
System
Page headers
- 444 px height for standard pages
- 700 px height for Product pages
System
Reusable web parts & layouts
- Consistent approach to how to display content
- Interchangeable components
- Quick development
- Optimized for mobile
- Multi-device responsive
- Accessibility compliant
