Fragmented Podcast: Breaking Down the Rebrand

If you haven’t noticed yet, a popular ear-candy amongst Android Developers, The Fragmented Podcast by Donn Felker and Kaushik Gopal went through a massive rebrand to structure itself for catering to a wider set of audiences instead of limiting it to just a single operating system or platform.

This is the designer for the new artwork + the small change in the visual language of Fragmented Podcast and I’m here to give you 7 fragments (yes, pun intended for the breakdown) of this rebrand.

Understanding what listeners relate to the brand to

For several others including me, Fragmented Podcast always conveyed a special place for Android Developers to learn and hear from the latest and greatest conversations, speakers, work styles, and opinions.

Given its the broad use of Material Design colors along with its shadows and components; the artwork and style screamed like Gerald Butler — ‘This is Android!’.

Also, the podcast name was a big giveaway that this was centered around an Android component.

The big move

The rebrand took place to make this a podcast for all sorts of developers, not necessarily Android. This shows that the brand has matured over time to not just limit itself to a particular platform, OS, or technology but aim to help developers who want to build better applications.

The initial conversation was if we should retain the colors to keep the familiarity and recognition but since we were also trying to steer away from the identification of material colors and go for a more professional but simpler style, that doesn’t relate itself to a particular technology.

With the move away from simply Android to a broader set of audiences, covering basics of software development to new platforms to best practices, advanced level topics which have frameworks to even covering the latest on their support for the #BlackLivesMatter moment — it was clear this was a step to go big or go home.

Walking a mile in the developer’s shoes.

This project was particularly interesting to me since I’ve studied Computer Science for 6 years before moving and specializing in Product Design. However, the concepts are fresh as day to me, to this day. So taking a step back from the requirements, the question I asked myself was —

What are few of the theoretical concepts students or professionals studying software development learn in the world of Computer Science and Information Technology?

The answers I came up with were

— Software Development Lifecycle Models (Waterfall, etc)

— Programming Languages

— Syntax/ Semi-colons

The variants

Based on a few of the above concepts, we decided to brainstorm and think over what could fit really well so that the idea and concept of the above answers are prevalent but isn’t an immediate giveaway to style the artwork. While doing this we failed to conclude some amazing designs due to a few setbacks with the idea and preset behind them.

Failed Attempt 1: We also tried some early variations to break down the word ‘fragmented’ into multiple fragments and mention ‘frag’, ‘men’, and ‘ted’ differently. But it didn’t signify anything and gave the podcast a masculine bias — which we wanted to avoid as a good brand practice to not hurt the sentiments of the wider audience we’re trying to cater to.

Failed Attempt 2: We then tried to break it down into ‘frag’ ‘ment’ and ‘ed’ where we figured ‘ment’ could mean Mentor, ‘ed’ could mean Education but frag didn’t have any specific meaning to it and it felt random.

Failed Attempt 3: We tried adding semi-colons too but not every language (looking at you, Python) these days uses it anymore making it not a timeless design.

Finally, we got the last round of variations and try one of these and to seal the deal. While it didn’t mean much — these are stylish for the artwork but I wasn’t happy with myself.

No compromises

With the exercise spanning over 2 weeks now — it was getting extended and that isn’t something we were looking for to do a simple design that listeners can relate to. So after a one-hour midnight walk over the weekend; around 2 AM in the morning — creative juices started flowing and my answer to the question above came as:

— Client-Server Model

I quickly drew a mockup on Sketch and asked 5–6 unsuspecting new and professional developers what they thought it was, as user testing is important to validate your thinking and designers to the end-users.

The answers were, ‘Sequence Diagram’, ‘Handshake protocol’, ‘Client-Server model’. Turned out everyone who studied software development knew this diagram at the back of their heads — because it’s so preliminary when you study software and an important concept!

In reality, the artwork was based upon Handshake protocol or commonly also known as Handshaking.

The hellos, syncs, acks, and established arrows made it so interesting to design the arrows and make a prominent artwork that stands differently, is simple but connects so effortlessly. So, we went ahead with it.

Color options and final tweaks

Based on the handshake protocol, we narrowed down to these color options.

However, the text, arrows, and simplicity were enough to convey the meaning we originally intended since developers also recognized it better during the user test over a black and white instead of a colored approach.

Based on SEO and other research, we also changed the subtitle from ‘The Developer Show/ Podcast’ to ‘The Software Podcast’.

The verdict

So here we are today, viewing at the result. We’re happy with it. What do you think?

Let us know on Fragmented Podcast’s Twitter (This has a different variation for the F letter to fit the word into the profile photo)

You can hop in to listen to Fragmented Podcast on multiple apps through Spec.fm. You can also get in touch w/ me on Twitter.