CASE STUDY

Neo4j - Rebrand

Role highlights:

• Brand Evolution
• Design Systems
• Team Building
• Stakeholder Alignment
• Digital Integration
• Creative Direction

Brief: At Neo4j, I led a full brand refresh that redefined the company’s visual identity, voice, and digital presence. This included revamping neo4j.com, producing award-level videos, and evolving brand systems—all while aligning the updated design across products and platforms to reflect Neo4j’s leadership in graph technology.

Audience: Our audience spanned NASA engineers, investigative journalists, enterprise CTOs, and the global developer community—each seeking powerful tools to surface meaningful connections through data. The brand needed to signal innovation, trust, and accessibility to both technical and non-technical users across varied industries.

Approach: I guided a collaborative, research-informed process involving interviews, audits, and brand workshops. We defined the core theme of “connectedness” and evolved the visual identity from logo to language. Working with stakeholders across design, marketing, and product, we embedded the new brand into the design system and digital experience.

Outcome: The brand refresh led to a 135% increase in annual engagement and raised our BlueOcean score to 185 (“Best in Class”). The new identity resonated with 95% of stakeholders and was embraced across product, sales, and marketing—positioning Neo4j as the clear leader in a growing competitive landscape.

Entire Brand Architecture including Brand

Entire brand architecture, including brand identity, products, and events.

Hero Variant 1

Hero Variant 2

  • Social: Graph Data Science

  • Social: Under the Hood - Explainer

  • Social: ICIJ - Panama Papers

  • Social: GraphConnect

  • Social: Graph Your Story

Our social media efforts delivered outstanding results, driving a 135% annual increase in engagement and significantly boosting our brand presence. We achieved a remarkable jump in our BlueOcean social score—from 123 to 185—earning a coveted “Best in Class” status. Additionally, our content resonated more than ever, with shares rising by 45% year over year. These metrics reflect the strength of our strategy, the power of compelling creative, and a deep understanding of our audience.

Leading the Neo4j brand refresh during the height of COVID meant building and managing a fully remote, globally distributed team. With limited in-office collaboration, I coordinated across time zones—from U.S. stakeholders to offshore creatives in Europe and Asia. I implemented structured workflows and clear communication channels, ensuring alignment despite the distance. This approach fostered a tight-knit, highly efficient creative team that delivered a unified, modern brand presence—proving that strong leadership transcends location and circumstance.

Emil Eifrem, CEO & Founder, Neo4j

“I am so proud of the new logo. Whenever I see it, whether in print or on the building, it stands out compared to where we were before. I am so happy with it. Richard was deeply involved, putting in a huge amount of work, and we did it at just the right moment, right before the fundraising.”