The OtterTune rebrand was created in partnership with High Seas Design and Development. The new site was released to the public following the OtterTune v2.0 product release on April 5, 2023.
One of the first projects I led while at OtterTune was the brand redesign. After the brand announced its series A funding in May of 2022, we began working on messaging, positioning, competitive analysis, and visual design with the team at High Seas.
DJ OT circa 2020
DJ OT circa 2022
DJ OT's persona was created with the influence of SoundCloud rappers. He's a wanna-be artist living on the streets of New York with a database habit he can't quite kick. Tuning databases and spitting tunes are practically the same thing, right? One of my favorite articles written about the brand was The Register's Lindsay Clark's note of the DJ OT persona in "Rapping Otters and Automated Database Knob-Twiddling." DJ OT first started appearing in OtterTune's blog post illustrations. After finding a positive response through AB design testing, DJ OT began appearing in areas of the product and along the landing pages of the website.
We also added a color coding system for content so users can move through the site and learn about OtterTune's capabilities on their terms.
This project allowed me to take the lead on positioning, messaging, visual communication, and user navigation. As a team, we were very conscious of what matters to potential customers and the maximum time a person is willing to stay on a website before we lost their attention. One of the main questions we got pre-rebrand was about database security. A company's databases hold very sensitive material that is an integral part of their day-to-day operations. Our customers' main focus when adding OtterTune to their tech stack was what we do to keep their information secure. The result: safeguards. A customer's understanding of these safeguards is incredibly important to their trust in OtterTune. All security information needed to be transparent and digestible. Previous to the re-brand, the security information was hidden in the documentation but with the rebrand, we created a page that will sit along with the main pages in the header.
