[emmett]

The first version of the Twitch brand, space-themed, was created by Jacob Woodsey (our only designer at the time and now owner of all social features at Twitch), in approximately 4 hours spread over the course of a single day. So probably equivalent to $1500 to get a high quality designer for a single day.

For the second version of the Twitch brand (Purple!), one year out and post-series-B: we had 3 designers on the Twitch brand, not quite full-time, for about 6-8 weeks. Plus a lot of Jacob's time. I'd estimate the total cost around $50-$100k to hire a high end design firm to do the same work.

In both cases, it was the right level of investment for Twitch at the time. Something quick and dirty to get us going in the first year, and something with some depth and quality once we had enough momentum to commit to a brand direction.

[futhey]

Thanks for sharing. As someone who's watched the Twitch brand evolve, this seems spot on, and the results are impressive.

You were definitely fortunate to have the in-house expertise to execute on exactly what you needed, at exactly the time you needed it!

[animal531]

Great info.

But what would you say was the drive that made you decide to go from Step A to B?

I guess I'm asking for tips (ignoring finances for the moment) as to when business/design wise you need to be looking at a larger and more involved option? Did the old design grow stale? Were you running into more real world use cases where you needed design elements that were missing originally? Or had the original just included more and more elements over time until it no longer seemed consistent?

[emmett]

The first design was expedient: we needed something in order to launch the website. So we did a really minimal amount of work. It was never great -- nothing done in four hours can be great -- but it sufficed to be able to launch a product.

After about a year, we had clear product momentum, so it was worth investing in a better brand design since we understood our direction and customers at that point well enough to do a good job that we wouldn't have to change later.