Catalyst brand

Building a brand for the product Catalyst would become

  • Naming
  • Brand strategy
  • Creative direction
  • Identity design
  • Activation
  • 2026

Companion to the Catalyst product case study.

The Catalyst logo on navy: the blue-to-cyan Spark beside the white Catalyst wordmark, animated in a loop.

I led the naming and built the identity for Catalyst, creating a distinct brand that extends Socialive and scales with the product’s expanding vision.

Team
Brand designer I directed, with leadership and stakeholders across product, go-to-market, sales, and marketing
Timeline
2026
Outcome
Approved in one leadership meeting with minimal changes. Activated across social, web, product, sales, and events.

Building for what’s next

Catalyst started as an AI video creation tool, but its roadmap extends much further: planning, orchestrating, and measuring video production.

A feature name under Socialive couldn’t support that ambition. The product needed a distinct brand that could grow with its capabilities while remaining connected to the parent company.

A vertical roadmap in four stages. Where it started: Create, AI video creation. Where it’s going: Plan, video production planning; Orchestrate, teams and workflows; Measure, performance and impact.
The roadmap the brand had to cover, from creating video to planning, orchestrating and measuring it.

Finding the name

I mapped the competitive landscape across two dimensions: how much creation was automated, and whether videos featured real people or avatars. Catalyst occupied a distinct space: AI-driven creation built around authentic human presence.

Most competitors also relied on generic, descriptive AI names. I wanted something distinctive, memorable, and broad enough to represent a flagship product.

A two-by-two market map. Across: prompt-based creation, from manual to fully prompted. Down: human presence, from authentic to synthetic or avatar. Descript and Lumen5 sit near the line between manual and prompted with authentic people; Pictory just below. Runway, Sora and Google Veo 3 are manual and synthetic; Synthesia and HeyGen are fully prompted and synthetic. Socialive sits alone in the fully prompted, authentic quadrant, which is highlighted.
The market before naming: tools clustered around manual editing or synthetic avatars, leaving fully prompted video with real people open.

I led the naming process with leadership and key stakeholders, having everyone bring ideas to the table before we evaluated them against the same criteria: distinctiveness, ownability, versatility, visual potential, and flagship presence.

We narrowed the options to five finalists. Canvas was too close to Canva. Composer lacked distinction. Prism was abstract and crowded in SaaS. Mosaic felt dated and didn’t convey speed.

Catalyst was the strongest fit. It describes what the product does: sets work in motion and accelerates creation without replacing the people behind it.

A table of the five finalists scored on distinctiveness, ownability, versatility, visual potential and flagship presence. Canvas, too close to Canva, misses on ownability. Composer, which lacked distinction, misses on distinctiveness. Prism, abstract and crowded in SaaS, misses on ownability. Mosaic, which felt dated and didn’t convey speed, misses on flagship presence. Catalyst, which sets work in motion and accelerates creation, meets all five, and its row is highlighted.
The five finalists against the same five criteria. Each of the other four missed on one; Catalyst met them all.

Designing the identity

I directed a brand designer through broad exploration before we narrowed to one concept and developed the system together.

The brief had three priorities: create an ownable identity for enterprise buyers, convey the product’s power without relying on generic AI tropes, and build a system that could expand with the roadmap.

The logo exploration in three stages. Fifteen broad directions in white: bursts, flames, a star, sparkles, leaves, stacked and pixel forms. An arrow leads to six pixel and node variants, then to the final Spark in its blue-to-cyan gradient.
From fifteen broad directions, to six pixel and node variants, to the Spark.

The Spark became the core mark: four nodes radiating from a central origin. The connections represent orchestration, with separate parts working together. The center represents creation, where a prompt, file, or idea becomes a video.

A shared grid makes the icon family extensible. New capabilities, from script writing to brand creation, can use the same visual language without requiring a new system.

A wordmark set in Socialive’s primary marketing font completes the identity. It’s direct and uncomplicated, letting the symbol carry the distinction.

The system taken apart: the Spark’s nodes, connections and center, the shared grid with icons for new capabilities like script writing and brand creation, and the wordmark.

“I immediately loved this visual identity. Something about it feels familiar, but also cutting edge. It’s perfect.”

Ben DavenportCTO, Socialive

Extending the Socialive brand

Catalyst builds on Socialive’s typography and secondary gradient while introducing its own visual language.

Glass adds a modern, technical quality. 3D creates depth and movement. Human-first photography keeps the brand grounded in authentic storytelling.

The result feels connected to Socialive without looking like another feature within it. Catalyst has room to become a platform in its own right.

Two cards on navy: a rounded square filled with the purple-to-cyan secondary gradient, labelled carried over from Socialive, and a type specimen of Roboto Flex showing Aa and the word Catalyst in regular, medium and variable weights, labelled shared typography.
What Catalyst builds on from Socialive: its typography and secondary gradient.
Four elements in a row on navy: a frosted glass disc over blue waves labelled glass, modern and technical; a floating blue rounded cube labelled 3D, depth and movement; a round photo of hands typing on a laptop labelled photography, human-first storytelling; and a circle of fine dots labelled dot matrix, pattern and texture.
The visual language Catalyst adds: glass, 3D, human-first photography and a dot matrix texture.

From approval to activation

I presented one concept in one leadership meeting. It was approved with virtually no changes before being introduced to the wider company.

That alignment let us move directly into activation across social, the website, product, sales materials, live demos, and FutureProof Festival.

Three Socialive social posts in the Catalyst brand: a blue chat exchange ending in Video complete, a white card reading Editing videos used to be difficult, and a photo of hands at a laptop with the prompt Translate my Product Launch video into Spanish.
A series of social posts introducing Catalyst.
Two business cards floating on black: a dark card with the Spark and the Catalyst wordmark between gradient corners, and a white card reading Make more video with a QR code.
Cards, banners, and booth decorations made for multiple live events.
The overview video used on the website and at in-person events.

“Dude, I f***ing love it.”

David MoriccaCEO, Socialive

Results

  • One concept, one meeting. Approved by leadership with minimal changes.
  • Five finalists, one clear direction. A structured process aligned leadership around the name.
  • One extensible identity system. Built to support the product as its capabilities expand.
  • Consistent brand activation. Extended across social, web, product, sales, and events.