Do you Apkudo?
I built Apkudo's brand twice. Apkudo is a service that let developers test their app on every Android device available — a complex optimization platform that people outside the industry had a hard time understanding, plus it needed a brand with enough swagger to win over the developers who'd actually use it. I gave it one.
Years later, the company had grown their business. So they called me back to refresh the brand. Here's both: the brand I built from scratch, and the rebrand that brought it forward.
first branding
Apkudo came to me for a logo. They left with a way to explain their company. Through discovery interviews across a distributed founding team, I pulled apart the competitive landscape, distilled their language into a brand architecture, foundation, practice, benefits, goal, and built two identity directions that could hold their own in a room full of developers. I coined "Do you apkudo?" turning a piece of enterprise software into a verb. Then I built the website over a single weekend hackathon and designed the tradeshow presence that put them in front of the industry for the first time. A founding partner told me: "You gave me more than a logo and message framework. You gave me a way to explain my hard-to-explain tech firm to investors and VCs." That's the work I'm proudest of, not the logo, the clarity.
Website design
Brand architecture
Messaging architecture
Product sheet
Posters
Business cards
branding part two
Apkudo had grown into a different company. The brand needed a new chapter. They hired PitchMaps to rethink their messaging architecture, then called me back to refine it and bring it to life. I refined the narrative framework and developed three new identity directions: one warm and human, and two data-forward and modern. Same strategic swagger of the original chapter. The rebrand gave Apkudo a brand that matched where it was heading.
“Dave is f***ing amazing. He is our secret weapon!”