Use All Five

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CEO of a music streaming platform called Quadio. We focus on niche communities and rising artists. We try to connect local musicians for the purposes of collaborating and streamlining the process of starting a band and finding other artists to work with.

What challenge were you trying to address with Use All Five?

We initially engaged Use All Five to determine the branding for our company and tailor the UI/UX of our website to match that branding.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

We approached Use All Five with a series of mood boards and ideas. Their team used those materials as a base for the four different design directions they presented to us. We liked certain elements of each design, so we collaborated to pick our favorite pieces and narrow our final branding strategy. They are finalizing those deliverables right now—our motto, logos, social media icons, and other general branding pieces.

Our work remains ongoing as they continue devising the UI/UX for our website. They do their designing in Sketch and share different iterations with us using InVision.  

What is the team composition?

Levi (CEO/Co-Founder, Use All Five) is our main point of contact. Whenever we have phone calls, we also speak with Troy (Art Director, Use All Five), Yuji (Creative Director, Use All Five), and Ben (Designer, Use All Five). One other person also coordinates the branding work.

How did you come to work with Use All Five?

We read reviews on Clutch and searched through the Awwwards website for the top design firms. We tried to look through as many portfolios as we could. Use All Five had a style that resonated with us the best and had a price estimate we felt comfortable with.

How much have you invested with them?

We expect to spend about $35,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in January 2019 and remains ongoing. They completed the branding work in February, but the UI/UX is still in the works.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re to the point where we can start producing some merchandise—physical, tangible things—because we have a refined brand that we’re proud of. Our current website is a placeholder until the UI/UX is complete and coded, but the existing fonts and logo that are online now are the result of Use All Five’s work. We’re happy to see our company be given some direction.

How did Use All Five perform from a project management standpoint?

Use All Five is very communicative through emails and phone calls. We sometimes experience delays because we send emails in the morning when they haven’t started work yet on the West Coast, but that’s a minor complication. Overall, they’ve done an amazing job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no negative feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give thorough and honest feedback because Use All Five takes it very well. It’s advantageous to have your own ideas but also smart to also not be too tied to them. We benefitted from being open to new things and letting Use All Five showcase their design expertise.  

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the executive director of communications at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, but I’ve worked with Use All Five while at other organizations as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with Use All Five?

I first worked with them to reposition an international architecture firm by bringing their website up to date. The site had to reflect the firm’s identity and have a forward-thinking UX and UI. It also had to convey practical information people needed. At UCLA, I brought them on for a rebrand, beginning with rebuilding our online presence to be more functional.

What was the scope of their involvement?

UCLA is a complicated institution, so our website had many pieces. The site, which has a custom backend and will soon be migrated to Contentful, launched in 2014. Use All Five continues to service all our needs in that area.

They also lead our effort to reconceive our identity across all collateral. They’ve created new brand guidelines and designed both print and digital assets. Involved in this is a system of logos. While traditional logos are static, we wanted ours to be dynamic and flexible to accommodate our school’s many different pieces. Thanks to Use All Five, each piece has an individual identity that also relates to the identity of the whole.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with a lot of their people over the years including Levi (Founder and CEO, Use All Five) and Jason (CTO, Use All Five), from the beginning. They’ve also assigned Troy (Art Director, Use All Five), and several other people who’ve come and gone. I’ve even continued to work with one of their designers after they left Use All Five.

How did you come to work with Use All Five?

I’d been aware of Use All Five’s work for a while, so I included them on my short list of vendors for the initial repositioning project. They beat out many established companies from New York with their work ethic, innovative ideas, and industry research.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve probably spent a couple hundred thousand dollars with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since 2008. I have an ongoing relationship with them where I’ll call them for a project here or there.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Their work on the architecture reposition was profiled by an industry-leading trade publication, who said the way they presented the client's work had never been done before. Regarding UCLA, they were able to create a coherent identity that also captured the individual departments' essences. We’ve gotten positive feedback on the logo system, and Use All Five presented their work at a Google conference, which caused others to take note. They get all the credit for faculty, students and prospective students, and the public appreciating our website.

How did Use All Five perform from a project management standpoint?

Depending on the project, we schedule regular meetings, and Levi puts together critical paths and schedules, which are shared as Google Docs. They use InVision to process all the design iterations and show us concepts, but don’t use tools like Asana. I don’t personally work in that space.

We’ve hit some bumps in the road when we lost a few people, but that’s one of the challenges of working with a growing firm. Overall, they have a consistent crew that keeps working until everything’s right. While some companies will ask for more and more money to keep improving something, Use All Five works beyond the finish line without complaint. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They do an amazing job from both an intellectual and conceptual point of view and a pragmatic and aesthetic one. Less apparent is their support for their community. They engage with the broader community of designer, artists, and thinkers, bringing people together in events to showcase their work. Finally, they’re just good people. I started a petition after the Sandy Hook shooting, and Levi made the website for me in 24 hours as a personal favor.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would advise having an overall traffic manager. Troy is an amazing designer, but he’s not a project manager, and Levi, as the CEO, can’t do everything. Levi’s looking into bringing someone on to manage the process and do QA for all his teams. They’re in a good place as a growing firm, but they haven’t built the infrastructure yet to handle bigger and bigger projects. That being said, this hasn’t impeded my work with them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Come ready with clear parameters. Engagements are complicated when the client isn’t clear with their briefs and objectives and can’t provide the designers with the structure they need. Having clear parameters will empower the designers to respond and react and fill in any remaining blanks.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Art of Sport. We’re a consumer goods e-commerce startup in the personal care space.

For what projects/services did your company hire Use All Five?

We engaged Use All Five to help us architect our brand in addition to designing and developing our packaging and e-commerce experience.

How did you select this vendor?

We looked for partners with deep design and development acumen who would be able to work flexibly with us through an initial investigative period. This process spanned from ideation to concrete and consistent deliverables.

Describe the project in detail.

We began by sharing our vision for the project, along with our desired attitudinal and artistic direction. This evolved and was later refined over a series of discovery meetings, yielding concepts for brand, packaging, and web. Use All Five was extremely iterative and collaborative throughout, while simultaneously keeping us on track and moving toward our launch deadlines.

What was the team composition?

We deliberately kept the team lean and would expand or contract depending on the next series of deliverables. This resulted in an optimal balance between speed, efficiency, and experience.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

With their support, we launched the brand nationally and immediately experienced international attention along with significant growth. For the most part, our consumers are delighted by the brand and the simplicity of our message and experience.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

With their support, we launched the brand nationally and immediately experienced international attention along with significant growth. For the most part, our consumers are delighted by the brand and the simplicity of our message and experience.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We worked well together. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but it was an excellent experience all things considered.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re a collaborative partner with great follow-through and execution. A lean, production-oriented leadership allowed them to effectively deliver high-quality output. I’d also give them high marks for creativity and design wherewithal.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None that I can think of. They did an exceptional job.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

General Admission is a clothing retailer. We make all our own products and distribute them through e-commerce and our retail location.

What challenge were you trying to address with Use All Five?

We needed help building a good e-commerce experience. We wanted a long-term functioning website that we wouldn't have to update every year.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Use All Five built a Shopify e-commerce site. They created a lot of custom options on the site beyond what the Shopify templates offer. I gave them some direction but the design was mostly driven by them. They provided the creative direction and the design of the web experience.

What is the team composition?

We worked with their three main guys. One leads the creative side, one leads the tech side, and the other leads the business relationships and sales. Each guy has a specific function, and the combination works well.

How did you come to work with Use All Five?

I was referred to them by a friend. They saw something interesting with our business, and gave us a very good deal.

How much have you invested with them?

We had a unique arrangement where we gave them a percentage of our sales for a little while. I don't exactly know how much that came to, but it was around $15,000–$20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from August 2017–January 2018.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

My online sales doubled over last year, which is amazing. They're good with branding and design. What they've done has definitely made an impact. We've had a lot of people reach out and say the website is great. We’ve only gotten positive feedback.

How did Use All Five perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team is organized. We typically communicate by email. The whole customer service experience has been really good. I can't say enough positive things about them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They actually were passionately interested in the fashion industry, which was a huge plus for me. Working with people that understand the product and what you're trying to do is so important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. We did a lot of social media that didn't produce great results. Neither the product nor the messaging was right, but that was more on us than it was on them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don't have any advice. They're easy people to work with, and they will give you good advice.