The system every other project on this site is built on.

Context

Biotium is a life sciences company built around fluorescence, the science of color. But the brand didn't reflect that. The existing logo carried 3D artifacts from an earlier era, uneven proportions in the molecule mark, and a mixed-case wordmark that fought with itself at small sizes. There were no documented rules for logo lockups, spacing, color usage, or typography, so every marketing asset that came before me had to solve the identity problem from scratch. Product packaging, scientific posters, sales collateral, and trade show booths, none of them agreed with each other. I joined as a marketing assistant in 2018. By 2021, I was the only designer in the company, which meant the fix and the responsibility for making it stick were mine.

Approach

I treated this less as a logo redraw and more as an audit of every place the brand touched a customer, then worked backward to the smallest unit that had to be right: the mark itself.

On the mark. I reduced the molecule's height, removed the 3D shading, tightened the bond length for optical symmetry, and changed the wordmark to lowercase to match how scientists actually write brand names in publications. Small moves, but they compound. The mark now holds up on a 96-well plate label and a 10-foot trade show wall.

On the system. I locked in Mulish as the type family (open, humanist, legible in dense scientific layouts), defined a four-color palette anchored by a saturated core, leaving room for the fluorescence-inspired gradients to breathe, and documented a spacing and lockup system that non-designers could follow without asking me.

On the rollout. I built a Brand Style Reference Guide as the single source of truth, then personally redesigned every high-visibility touchpoint. I started with product packaging and scientific reference materials because those are what customers hold and pin to lab walls.

Outcome

• Adoption. The system is now the default across product packaging, scientific reference posters, sales collateral, trade show materials, web, and email. Every case study on this site is downstream of it.

• Longevity. In production for 5+ years with no rework needed at the system level, only extensions.

• Compounding effect. The system made it possible to later build the 3D rendering pipeline, the email module library, and the antibody finder tool. All of them assume a consistent visual language exists.