Brand · Web · Illustration · 2018

Kalo

A rebrand for the freelancer-management platform that turned work from anywhere into a literal universe — astronaut characters, planet palettes, and a marketing site that reads as a different kind of B2B.

Kalo marketing homepage in motion
Role
Lead visual designer
Team
Brand, Marketing, Product
Deliverables
Brand identity · illustration system · marketing site · mobile · micro-sites · ad campaigns
The brief

Make B2B not look like B2B.

Kalo was a freelancer-management platform — the kind of product that usually looks like every other enterprise dashboard. The rebrand asked a sharper question: if our promise is "work with anyone, anywhere," what does anywhere look like when you take it literally?

The answer was a brand world I called Kalo Universe — a small set of astronaut characters, planet palettes, and illustrated environments that gave a serious B2B product a warmer, weirder, more memorable shape.

The concept

A universe where talent works from anywhere.

Kalo Universe — astronaut characters in space pods

The Kalo Universe

Astronaut characters of every kind, floating in colored pods, working on laptops in space. The metaphor stayed consistent across every surface — the login screen, the empty states, the ad campaigns, the office walls. The brand felt like a place, not a logo.

Selected surfaces

Where the brand lived.

The visual system played out across product, marketing, environment, and merch. A few representative surfaces.

Kalo login screen with brand illustration
Login · brand entry
Kalo product overview — freelancer search and profile
Product · overview
Kalo marketing website — multiple desktop screens
Marketing site · desktop
Kalo marketing site — mobile responsive
Marketing site · mobile

Kalo shipped, ran for a while, eventually pivoted. The universe outlasted the company on Dribbble — which is its own kind of testimonial.

— Manjia Zhao