AsanaCopied

Asana was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein. By 2015 it claimed 140,000 companies used its software, and the most common user request, the founders told TechCrunch, was better design. Internally, the team admitted the brand did not say who they were: a lowercase 'a' followed by three dots in a row, symbolising nobody was quite sure what, in a drab blue and grey the team called the rainy-day theme.

The company spent about a year on it, first defining four brand attributes with people from product, marketing, design and engineering, then hiring Moving Brands to find a symbol of collaboration. Asana's then brand lead Micah Daigle later wrote that the studio's first proposal was the winner: the three dots huddled together, the simplest possible symbol of teamwork, read as an upward arrow, a therefore sign or an abstract A. Some staff worried it was too simple, or looked like the Predator's targeting lasers. After a month of alternatives they returned to it, adding a glow at the centre for shared energy. Rosenstein, initially sceptical, said on his phone's home screen it was obviously the teamwork app.

The dots changed from cool green to warm coral with a glow, and three equally spaced dots hide inside the As of the wordmark. A system followed, described as clarity punctuated by energy: a clean white canvas with bursts of colour, including celebrations when tasks are completed.

It launched on 30 September 2015 alongside a redesigned product rebuilt from the ground up.

Asana's post had the best line of the launch. Its three dots, it said, used to patiently wait in line at the deli counter, but now they were working together on a common goal. The process started by asking what Asana would be like if it were a person, which produced four brand attributes agreed by people from product, marketing, design and engineering, a yardstick for any new design or piece of writing. About a year earlier, it admitted, the brand simply was not conveying who the company was. The deli queue joke does more to explain the new mark than any symbolism could.

It is one of the best small rebrands of the decade: a minimal change with maximum meaning. Moving three dots from a list into a huddle tells the product story better than any manifesto.