Ubey

Context

Ubey is a digital agency specializing in web design, branding, and digital marketing services. At Ubey, I had two parallel responsibilities:

1) Internally, I designed the agency’s entire brand and website. I built a scalable design system, restructured content for SEO and conversion, and enabled the team to launch new pages without any dev support.

2) Externally, I led UX/UI design for client projects across industries — including e-commerce, non-profits, and service businesses. I adapted each solution based on budget, goals, and constraints, balancing quality and speed. Working in both roles helped me develop end-to-end design skills, from branding and strategy to execution in real-world client scenarios.

The Problem

Ubey was a new digital agency entering a crowded market. With no visual identity and no site yet, Ubey needed to look like a trustworthy, established partner from day one — even as a small team.

My challenge was to create a visual system that:

• Made the agency stand out among generic competitors
• Clearly explained what we do and who we help
• Could scale across pages, case studies, and future projects
• Built trust through clarity and consistency

This wasn’t just a “make it pretty” task — it was about designing credibility from scratch.

Objectives

My primary goals for the Ubey project were:

• Create a strong visual identity that made the agency feel confident and trustworthy — despite being a new player in the market.
• Design and launch a modern, responsive website that clearly explained what we do and helped turn visitors into leads.
• Create a scalable design system that could be applied across various client projects
• Build a flexible internal UI system — components, layouts, patterns — to speed up delivery on future projects, without sacrificing uniqueness.
• Define a basic set of brand rules (typography, colors, spacing) to keep all internal assets visually consistent.
• Make sure every design choice was practical — easy to build, update, and scale over time.

Research & Insights

To understand our audience, I ran focused research on competitor positioning, user expectations:

Competitive Analysis

I reviewed over 80+ digital agency websites to understand how they presented services, structured content, and captured leads. Many agencies were visually strong but lacked clarity, especially for small-to-medium businesses. This revealed a niche: positioning Ubey as approachable, transparent, and fast to work with — not just visually impressive.

Target Audience Research

I spoke directly with business owners and marketing managers — the typical decision-makers, to understand what they look for when choosing an agency. The same themes came up: trust, clarity, and past results. I mapped their journey from discovering an agency to making contact, which helped shape the structure of our homepage and service pages.

Industry Trends

I studied design and UX trends across successful agency sites and SaaS landing pages, focusing on conversion best practices. This included clear service breakdowns, fast loading times, mobile-first layouts, and strong case studies — all of which were integrated into Ubey's site.

Key Insights

After speaking with real clients and analyzing agency sites, a few patterns became clear:

• Clarity beats creativity. Clients don’t want to be impressed — they want to understand what you do, how it helps, and what it costs.
• Trust is visual. The portfolio is more important than any headline — people judge credibility by examples, not by claims.
• Overchoice is a blocker. Too many vague services or buzzwords make people leave. Simple navigation and clear page structure build confidence.
• Speed = seriousness. If the site is slow or clunky on mobile, it instantly kills trust - especially for a “tech-savvy” agency.

Design Approach

My design approach was rooted in one question: how can a small agency instantly look trustworthy, experienced, and easy to work with - without sounding like every other agency out there?

Brand Strategy

• Positioned Ubey as a straightforward, transparent, and reliable partner through clean visuals, clear messaging, and minimal fluff
• Created a brand identity system that felt professional, but not corporate — focused on approachability over hype
• Used a muted but modern color palette, geometric typography, and real-case visuals to build instant trust
• Framed services around done-for-you solutions to reduce friction, clarify scope, and simplify onboarding for non-technical clients

Design System

• Built a fully documented UI kit in Figma: typography scales, spacing rules, components with variants, etc.
• Created modular UI blocks that could be reused across new case studies, landing pages, and service pages
• Established brand tokens (color, type, shadows) and ensured consistency

User Experience (UX)

• Ran navigation tree tests to validate structure and simplify page hierarchy (to cut bounce rate)
• Designed clear CTAs for each visitor type — potential client, returning client
• Prioritized mobile-first layout with 2s load time across pages and smart spacing that worked on all screen sizes

Branding & Identity

Ubey needed a visual identity that would immediately convey trust and professionalism - even as a small, new agency. The goal wasn’t just to look modern, but to make potential clients feel confident choosing Ubey for their website, branding, and marketing needs. To support that, I developed a brand system that was clear, flexible, and built to scale across everything from the website to client presentations.

Logo Design

• A minimal, grid-based logo that balances logic with personality
• The geometric shapes reflect clarity, while soft curves make the brand feel approachable and human
• It’s built to scale - working just as well on a business card as on a billboard

Color Palette

The color system for Ubey was shaped by research and strategic intent.

• During our brand exploration, blue, red, and violet emerged as strong contenders — each evoking different emotions
• After evaluating competitors, audience expectations, and the tone we wanted to set, we collaboratively chose blue as the primary brand color
• The selected primary color — deep blue (HEX: #143DEA): projects trust, clarity, and a sense of confidence, aligning with how we wanted Ubey to be perceived.
• Accent shades bring visual energy to calls-to-action and interface highlights, while neutral tones (soft grays and off-whites) maintain readability and balance.

Typography

Ubey’s typography system was built for clarity, flexibility, and a modern feel:

• We selected Inter Font — a clean, versatile typeface optimized for both screen and readability.
• Defined a scalable size system: 12px, 14px, 16px, 18px, 20px, 24px, 40px, 60px — covering everything from small UI labels to hero headlines.
• Applied consistent font weights — Regular, Medium, and Semi Bold — to build clear hierarchy across content.
• This system ensures the brand voice feels professional, structured, and easy to scan, whether in marketing materials or interfaces.

Buttons

I developed a scalable, accessible button component library optimized for both speed and consistency across all digital products.

• Aligned with WCAG 2.1 AA standards, ensuring visual accessibility through contrast compliance and state visibility.
• Four distinct button tiers (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary) - each optimized for different levels of interaction priority.
• Each button includes clearly defined UI states: Native, Hover, and Inactive — helping users understand affordances and reinforcing interaction clarity.

Results & Impact

• Delivered 20+ websites for clients across diverse industries including real estate, education, wellness, and more
• Reduced page creation time from several hours to under 30 minutes by designing a modular, component-based system
• Enabled the team to publish one new SEO-optimized page per day without developer or designer involvement
• Strengthened Ubey’s positioning as a lean, efficient, design-led agency despite limited resources and high market competition

The Sunset of Ubey

Ubey ran for just over a year, during which we delivered high-quality work and built efficient internal systems. While the studio maintained strong creative and technical standards, the economics of scaling in an oversaturated market made long-term growth unsustainable.

Many competitors leaned heavily on outsourcing and aggressive pricing. I received regular offers to offload projects — essentially just to act as a middleman. That wasn’t the direction I wanted to take.

Rather than compromise on quality or dilute the work, I made a strategic decision to close the studio and refocus on direct, high-impact projects that reflect my standards in design and execution.

Project Images