Cubes on cubes on cubes: Together’s brand for Diffblue embodies the AI coding tool’s potential — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Optimised to be functional and aesthetic in equal measure, Together’s visual identity for autonomous AI coding tool Diffblue is confident in its aesthetic restraint, harnessing the graphic strength of a simple, robust concept – cubes. “The brand system was built using squares and cubes to represent unit tests,” Ben Wynn-Owen, Creative Director of the London-based creative agency tells us, baking that into the very foundations of the brand – from the wordmark to the expansive 3D visuals. “This ensured Diffblue’s offering was present in its simplest form in a way that connects to the wider brand language,” he continues, channelling this approach into every element of the brand, leading them to Colophon’s monospace, Chromatic Pro Mono, as the typographic basis of the identity and logomark.

“We adjusted the mono font to create ligatures in the double ‘ff’,” Wynn-Owen explains, “creating an overlap we could sneak the squares in,” a notion that draws directly on Diffblue’s technical capacity whilst creating a visual balance across the logomark through the matching squared form of the period and the tittles. “We wanted a typeface that felt premium, simple and connected to the world of tech,” Wynn-Owen expands. “On discovering Chromatic Pro we found a perfect typeface that not only offered enough flex and control in its variable font to perfectly set our headlines and body copy,” he suggests, “but also paired incredibly well with its mono cut for our digital tags and code snippets in the product demos.”

In addition to providing a pleasing graphic hook for the brand to latch on to, the use of cubes also offers somewhat of an educational function to boot, helping detail Diffblue’s complex technical output that is generally misunderstood. “We developed a brand system born from the idea of visualising Diffblue’s point of difference, the ability to offer precise unit tests, at scale. This technical, and potentially emotionless offering was brought to life in a simple yet beautiful way – 2D squares and 3D cubes. ,” Wynn-Owen explains. “We used the 2D squares to visualise each individual unit test, placed on a grid and shown in large quantities, to represent scale. We then used the 3D cubes to represent those tests up close, capturing Diffblue’s ability to show you the details of the test results.”

“To ensure the system felt alive and engaging, we animated these simple shapes with looping motion and subtle interactions, showing the dynamic, always-on service Diffblue offers,” Wynn-Owen continues. “We built a square grid system that informed the entire approach to layout to create consistency and cohesion.” Speaking to the balance of beauty and technicality, Wynn-Owen explains, “in my mind, beauty and functionality are not mutually exclusive,” noting the allure of graphic utility and the visual satisfaction of something simply working to its greatest capacity. “It’s the same for the Diffblue brand,” he concludes, “we developed a highly functional brand system that brought beauty to a world of tech-heavy stereotypes,” crafting a concept-led, robust identity that thoughtfully and graphically embodies the brand it champions.