Yandex for Developers (YfD) is a group that handles tech PR at Yandex. It does so by organizing activities and launching events that cover a wide range of technical areas known as “stacks.” Among some of them are frontend, backend, hardware, analytics, and technical writing.
YfD is a single brand growing in multiple directions. The brand needed a fitting visual style to act as a business card to the world. With that in mind, we had all of the stacks reflect a unifying artistic vision that would accurately represent YfD’s mission and values.
The group’s logo is a fragment of real code highlighted by a selection of special colors and characters. This immediately showcases what the brand is all about. Both the monospaced font and the chosen color scheme of the logo further tie the theme to programming since both are widely used in the field. The group’s trademark symbol is a fragment of the logo (*//) that also looks like a “Y,” which symbolizes both Yandex and coding.
Our team of designers came up with a list of recurring dynamic and static elements to streamline the creative process and make it more effective. One of the key features of our design is the presence of custom frames that are shaped to look like printed circuit boards in a direct reference to the tech world. These frames can be seen both as boxes for images and text and as decorative elements in their own right.
The group’s symbol contains two patterns of elements that can be used either together or separately. Whenever a finer touch is required, the pattern based on the logo is paired together with relevant media materials in a minimalistic fashion.
Having standardized our visual style by creating a single corporate look, we also needed to come up with a way to visually differentiate between various events and programs organized by each stack. To achieve this, we developed a color-based system, with each color representing a particular stack.
Before, every project basically had to be built from the ground up – this is why many of our smaller events often ended up without any corporate style at all. Our design team developed principal features for each media outlet and prepared different design templates for each stack. As a result, producing design for a small event now takes little to no time.
Large-scale events often require a more personalized approach with unique branding. As a result, the logos of such events may or may not include elements of the core style we’ve created. The only condition is that the event’s logo must contain the group’s symbol in the color of that stack. Similar colors are always changed to the corporate ones.
Having a single style made it possible to automate the process of visual branding for all YfD events. So far, we’ve been able to successfully put out design for over 30 online and offline events quickly and with minimal effort.
Art directors ⟶ Anna Katsur, Maxim Alimkin
Designers ⟶ Anna Katsur, Masha Larionova, Кирилл Коренев, Лена Золототрубова
Managers ⟶ Анна Кузютина, Анна Шаяхметова
Designers ⟶ Anna Katsur, Masha Larionova, Кирилл Коренев, Лена Золототрубова
Managers ⟶ Анна Кузютина, Анна Шаяхметова
2021
