Showcase
Discipline: Product & Brand Design
2009-2010
What i did for Twilio
Twilio went public (TWLO) on June 23, 2016
ASK YOUR DEVELOPER. ๐คฏ (I didn't design this billboard btw)
The Twilio logo.
Jeff Lawson and I worked together at my desk at Pier 38 on the mark. We looked at many versions of the logo and migrated away from this "lanky janky" typographic treatment, skinny text and overly colorful versions for what you see today. Jeff's key feedback was "I don't want a logo that looks like you can just flick it away." - he wanted bold and big and that's how the mark has endured to this day.
Many incredible designers and marketers (and Jeff himself) have developed the Twilio brand far beyond what I could've imagined. Much of the credit of the brand's success belongs to them. It was, however, an honor to be a part of the early history of such an iconic technology brand in it's early days.
Four dots
The four dots inside of the Twilio glyph represent the microphone openings inside of a traditional rotary phone handset, another genius idea from Jeff.
Pier 38
Potentially one of the highest concentrations of raw talent in 2010. Instagram, Twilio, AllTrails, Fan Duel, Kong, Tubi TV, TaskRabbit, Automattic/Wordpress, 99designs and Etherpad (the tech behind realtime typing in GDocs) were all there together.
What is a voice application?
Most of the work I created while I was at Twilio (thankfully) has been vastly updated and improved. The origins of the company started with Voice Apps and getting developers to create them and use open source tools (like Open VBX which I branded and designed the early versions of) that utilized Twilio phone numbers and minutes. This design was a helper tool to explain how voice applications worked when the market was relatively new to the concept.
Where it all started.
I don't post this work because it is some revolution in product or communications design, I share it because it was so formative for me and my very early career. This company taught me how to be in a startup (and exposed some of my own weaknesses that I needed to improve as well). I am eternally grateful for the chance that Evan, Jeff and John took on me in my early career (and shout out to Danielle who took this photo one night when while we ate dinner in the conference room and worked into the night).
