If you’re not a graphic designer or tenured marketer, which many small business owners aren’t, designing a logo or brand collateral can be a daunting and demoralizing process.
Vistaprint has long aimed to make it a little easier for individuals and small companies looking to stand out from the competition by offering intuitive tools to help users put together business cards, brochures, logos and more.
But lately, the company has been thinking of ways to make branding even easier for its users. That’s where Deepika Singh, director of digital product management, and her team come in. They recently released a beta version of a tool called Logo Maker, which harnesses artificial intelligence and machine learning to suggest designs that immediately resonate with users.
And as exciting as this launch is, it’s just a small taste of what’s to come for Vistaprint.
“We are investing in many new design-focused products and services, and are actively spinning up new teams to build them,” Singh said.
To learn more about what the future has in store for Vistaprint, Built In Boston connected with Singh. She gave us a peek behind the curtain at the challenges and victories the team experienced while spinning the feature up, as well as why Logo Maker is an important tool in the company’s roadmap.
Vistaprint aims to make branded collateral accessible to small businesses and individuals through its online design tools, which allows users to quickly whip up logos, brochures, business cards and more.
Tell us about a newly launched product. How is it driving future projects at Vistaprint?
We are working on a new artificial intelligence, machine-learning-based logo tool maker. Whether a customer is looking to market a small business or hype up a soccer team, this tool helps them create beautiful logos in minutes. After answering a few questions, the AI suggests logo options to the customer. They can either accept the logo as-is or customize it in our design studio, changing the fonts, icons and layouts until the logo is perfect for them.
The road to the finished product wasn’t always smooth, but the team persevered. It helped that this team was small, focused and had all the skills they needed to achieve success. We started with a small engineering squad, who quickly developed an AI-based proof of concept to validate the idea. We then recruited a product team of engineers, product managers, designers, analysts and customer researchers with a diverse set of skills. We brought in strong leaders, like an entrepreneurial project manager who ran a software company, and a design lead with years of experience at Apple.
Together, this team shaped the product through adjustments in strategy and tech as we worked to discover what our customers truly love. We just launched in beta and can’t wait to see what we learn.
How did Vistaprint celebrate this win — and the people responsible for pushing the product over the finish line?
Vistaprint is a global, remote-first company. In this case, the product team for Logo Maker is spread across their homes in India and the US. We ordered food and drinks to be delivered to our houses and joined a Zoom party to socialize, play games and take some time to reflect and celebrate.
Once our beta testing is complete, we will jump into the next phase of the product, working toward our next launch and celebration. We can’t wait to be able to travel and celebrate together in person once global travel opens backs up again.
Which teams are hiring, and what types of employees are you looking to bring aboard?
The Logo Maker product team is part of the larger full spectrum design team, which aims to bring design to Vistaprint customers during any part of their journey. Whether customers need a logo created as they start their new business, are customizing one of Vistaprint’s thousands of design templates to build upon their existing brand, or need a bespoke design to create a brand from scratch, Vistaprint offers the full range of services to meet customers with a design solution that works for them.
We are investing in many new design-focused products and services, and are actively spinning up new teams to build them. To lead these teams, we’re looking for customer-obsessed product managers who closely understand the needs of our customers, can drive cross-functional teams with different skill sets toward the same goal and keep an eye toward our future.
Let us know if you think that’s you.
