kotu brand logo

Revolutionizing the future of volunteering

Helping others doesn’t have to be so hard. Whether it’s organizing a volunteer event or even just checking in as a volunteer, the process of volunteering is complicated, time-consuming, and sometimes a little stressful.

Bugle is revolutionizing the way we volunteer with seamless check-in integrations, digital waivers, and event organizer dashboards. The Stripe for social good, Bugle quietly powers volunteer events for The American Red Cross, The Special Olympics, and more as an all-in-one solution.

ROLE

Bugle initially approached me to build a scalable, human-centered brand for them, as well as build out their MVP digital product. Over the past two years, I’ve continued to build out the brand with email templates, illustrations, and new product features.

This includes:

  • Setting the mood, tone, and brand direction for Bugle
  • Developing the brand traits, values, and manifesto
  • Designing a custom, scalable logo (and secondary, illustrative marks for the logo)
  • Creating custom single-line illustrations and building the brand system of colors and typography
  • End-to-end product design for both a client-facing event dashboard and a volunteer-facing web app
  • Building a robust, comprehensive UI component library of interchangeable, organized components that the Bugle team can use to build future features
  • Designing a responsive promotional landing page and email templates
  • Merchandise and application design
  • Desktop and mobile prototyping for the Bugle team to use for user research, product testing, and investor pitching
RESULTS

Bugle was recently launched out of beta in 2024 (Reuters).

CLIENT

Bugle

DURATION

April 2022 - July 2024

SKILLS

Strategy

Brand Identity

Visual Identity

Logo Design

Illustration Design

Product Design

Email Design

UX/UI Design

Design System Architecture

Prototyping

Developer Handoff

BRAND IDENTITY

Lending a helping hand

1 in 4 Americans volunteer and Bugle will be their digital-age “helping hand”. I wanted to play with this idea of a “helping hand” with hand-drawn, single-line illustrations throughout the brand to create a human, friendly feel. Bright colors in the palette have slight tones of gray to ground them and create a playful, but not overbearing visual look.

kotu brand identity
BRAND IDENTITY

Fine-tuning the horn

1 in 4 Americans volunteer and Bugle will be their digital-age “helping hand”. I wanted to play with this idea of a “helping hand” with hand-drawn, single-line illustrations throughout the brand to create a human, friendly feel. Bright colors in the palette have slight tones of gray to ground them and create a playful, but not overbearing visual look.

photo collage of bugle brand logo
product DESIGN

Multiple flows, one design system

Bugle had two products to design: a QR-code based check-in for volunteers that seamlessly allows them to add their personal data and sign digital waivers, and a robust event dashboard for organizers to create events, keep track of volunteer data, and transfer this data to their CRM. Beyond the two complex web apps to design, I also created a two-page website that the Bugle team could use to explain who they are and what sets them apart to volunteer organizations and investors, email and social media templates, and a comprehensive UI component library.

The custom Figma library is inclusive of standardized breakpoints, typography rules, and UI elements (form fields, buttons, tabs, and more) to set the Bugle team up for success.

With each successive round of work, we built the MVP out from a simple event dashboard to a powerful platform that can send out mass text and email updates, create digital waivers, and set organization admins and groups.

image collage of the bugle brand logo
FROM THE FOUNDERs

“Sylvie is a creative, focused, and brilliant designer. From branding to UI/UX, Sylvie's passion for design, insightful perspective, and thoughtful attention to the smallest of details, is as refreshing as it is powerful. She took our vision for Bugle and single handedly created a brand that we are very proud of today. Her work with Bugle has been nothing short of formative for us.”

– Ryan Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO

iamge collage of bugle brand merchandise and branding