Mark Johnson

4700 word labor of love. I've seen all the patterns and heard every story about in-house brand/creative studio teams. This is my vision for where brand teams can go (and why I joined @tryramp). Brand systems that behave like jazz. Brand as software.

NEW WORK 🚀 We recently shipped Router.com. This is one of many launches that will build upon @tryramp's vision. And if you really looked, you may have spotted some new brand elements. Today, we’re sharing the first look at our evolved brand. We’re calling it Solar System because of our primary Ramp brand color. The idea was simple: build a brand system that behaves like jazz. Why? Because the world is changing too fast. The speed at which we’re shipping at Ramp will only increase and the world will only get more unpredictable. As we build this world, we realized we needed a new system — new ingredients, musical notes, and tools — that behaved more like software and nothing like the old way of brand building. Most brands optimize for consistency: “We always look like this.” We’re building for coherence: “We evolve, and you still know it’s us.” Brand as software is the operating principle in this new AI era. A system that can move at the speed of culture, learn while we grow, without losing focus of our core purpose: saving companies time and money. We built this first version in four weeks. We'll keep improving it out in the open. I’m insanely proud of the heart and care this team put into the work. Personally this is the fastest I've ever evolved a brand, and it was only possible because of this group. Massive shoutout to @diegozaks , @markweaver , Aodan Reddy, Nicholas Ano, Cristina Keane, Emerline Ji, @FonsMans , Roan Collom, @messybirkin , @jdreeves , Jack Beveridge, Silas Reeves, Kyla Arsadjaja, @ItsJonHowell , @bradleyziffer , Azeem Segraves, Claire Chen, Eleanor Ngai, @viktor, David Fetherston, John Mock, and Alex Chimienti. Job's not finished.

Every company I've worked at, product graphics were always a bottleneck. They're important assets because they help sell the value of the product. But what happens when the product is constantly evolving? I built a tool (inspired by what George Bugg started) where I turned all of out atoms/components into HTML so that anyone internally can create their own product graphics. Because we have amazing guidelines (shoutout Shivani and team) I was able to give it specific constraints, rules, and guidelines. So much more potential for this tool, e.g, product animation or creating demos. I even got a Slack bot to generate graphics without me even touching the tool.

My bud @markjohnsoncc shipped the coolest thing for the typography community. type.lol/ Discover type from 830+ independent foundries. Browse 14k+ typefaces across carousel, list, graph, and globe views — filter by classification, country, variable fonts, and more.

In Q1, my team and I launched the new Personio brand. It was 30% done. We had six months to push the brand system, overhaul the core product experience, and other key areas. Since then, we've added all the musical instruments needed: branded iconography, illustration, motion, animation, brand messaging, and more. Here's some of the work we pushed this year. Super proud of my team and the dozens of people involved in making all of this real.

just feel like putting this here