# Yubico

> Leading the evolution of the Yubico brand: an evidence-based brand strategy, a clear architecture between Yubico and YubiKey, the 2026 brand guidelines, and the design operation that keeps it all running across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

- Case study: https://tiedtke.se/work/yubico-brand-refresh/
- What it was: Brand Refresh
- Client: Yubico
- Year: 2021—2026
- Medium: Brand, Design
- Gabriel's role: Creative Direction, Art Direction, Design, Branding

## Key numbers

- 158+ sources in the brand audit
- 15 → 93 pages of brand guidelines
- −97.8% design turnaround time
- −61% operating expense

## The challenge

Yubico had grown faster than its brand. The YubiKey had become so well known that the product often stood in for the company, while Yubico itself stayed in the background. The guidelines were a 15-page sheet of logo, colors and fonts, written for a company that mostly talked to security teams, just as it was reaching consumers, small businesses and retail shelves. Regional teams were improvising their own versions, and every design request queued behind a small team. The brand had to get clearer and easier to use at the same time.

## The approach

I started with evidence instead of taste: a brand audit drawing on 158+ sources, from performance and search data to reviews, competitor analysis and audience research. It became a brand strategy built on four pillars: make the right story obvious to each type of customer, make trust provable through Swedish heritage and open standards, treat the experience as part of the brand, and build one endorsed ecosystem, with Yubico as the source and YubiKey as the hero.

Then I wrote the 2026 brand guidelines, “The source of design”, to make that strategy usable. Twenty chapters instead of a style sheet: voice, architecture, color, type, ecosystem, patterns, a mascot, sound, spaces, accessibility, motion, packaging, trademarks and AI, ending with a launch checklist. The art direction, which I called Solid State Design, starts from the hardware: shapes follow the YubiKey's own geometry, flat surfaces only gain depth where it helps someone act, and the signature gradient is drawn from the light of a YubiKey. Near-white canvases and calm, dark primaries leave Yubico Green with one job: signaling trust.

A brand only holds if people can use it, so the other half was operational: a brand hub that teams in NAM, EMEA and APJ self-serve from, AI-enabled workflows, and a 79-point SLA framework, so the brand holds up when I'm not in the room.

## The outcome

One architecture and one 93-page reference that designers, marketers, partners and engineers can all work from, with the same logic running from the website to the Best Buy shelf. Behind it, a DesignOps transformation that cut turnaround time by 97.8%, lifted output 20% year over year and lowered operating expense by 61%.

## What people said

- “You've really taken the Yubico brand to the next level.” (A colleague, on the brand work (translated from Swedish))