Sharpsee: Brand Identity & Web Redesign

Subtitle: INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AI PLATFORM Role: Design Partner Timeline: 2025 URL: https://hunterandbard.com/portfolio/sharpsee

Summary

A full brand and website overhaul for an industrial computer vision platform. The redesign repositions Sharpsee as a category-defining safety platform, with a visual system built to match the stakes of the product without losing the technical credibility the category demands.

Challenge

Industrial safety buyers don't respond to startup aesthetics. The original Sharpsee site led with an acronym (IOISS), defaulted to light-mode SaaS conventions, and buried its value proposition behind feature lists. The platform had genuine urgency. The site communicated none of it. The challenge was to build a visual identity and web presence that matched the stakes of the product without losing the technical credibility the category demands.

Key Decisions

Dark cinematic hero

Rather than defaulting to a light-mode SaaS layout, the hero runs full-bleed dark with a scrim and left-aligned content column. All visual real estate on the right is given to footage of the product in context: equipment, workers, real industrial environments.

Impact: The hero reads as a category statement, not a software landing page. Industrial buyers recognize the environment immediately.

Orange as signal, not fill

#FF6347 is used exactly once per section, on the single element that matters most. It never fills backgrounds. It never decorates. It functions the way warning indicators function on the factory floor: to direct attention.

Impact: The restraint makes every orange element feel like it means something, which mirrors how the product itself works.

Manrope 800 as editorial weight

A single typeface at maximum weight for headings pulls the design toward editorial authority rather than SaaS approachability. Tight tracking on display headlines, comfortable leading on body.

Impact: The type system gives the weight that headlines like, 'The Math That Keeps CFOs Awake' and 'The Cost That Doesn't Fit on a Balance Sheet' need to land.

Outcomes

• Category-Level Visual Identity — A complete design system, color, type, and layout, applied consistently across every section of the homepage.
• Buyer-Facing Positioning — A homepage that leads with consequences (accidents, shutdowns, liability) rather than features, structured for CFO and safety director audiences.
• Homepage as Sales Tool — Every section sequenced to move a skeptical buyer: from urgency, to proof, to specificity, to action.

Learnings

• The old site opened with the product name and the technology. The redesign opens with what inaction costs, because pushing off a decision is the most expensive option. Naming the settlement figure and the company closure rate changes the prospects risk assessment. Features come after you've earned the attention.
• A product about accidents, liability, and shutdowns couldn't wear a bright, friendly SaaS look. This copy would have felt hollow against it. Matching the visual and editorial register to the stakes was most of the work.
• Copy and design locked together from the start produces a different result than design-then-copy. The headlines shaped the layout as much as the visual decisions did.