Big news! We’ve released an updated visual brand identity, which includes a new logo, colors, and typography. You’ll see the new look anywhere we’re out in public, like our website, social media, events and very soon you’ll see it in all of our products, as well. What is the genesis of this change? Why Now?

The Beginning

Big Nerd Ranch found early success in developer and designer training – from books to immersive boot camps – and the holy grail of teaching complex concepts in a way that their students could retain and apply it to real products. So it wasn’t long before developers and designers across the world raved about Big Nerd Ranch’s thoughtful books and boot camp experience.

Over time, the developer and designer training market became saturated with companies that all seemed to make the same promise to emerging developers and designers. Some overpromised with guaranteed job placement. Many under-delivering, causing a downward spiral in the integrity of the training market. In addition to in-person training, the online options were everywhere and, in many cases, free. Big Nerd Ranch was not excluded from the negative impact of an overcrowded market.

Luckily, although class sizes were shrinking, loyal alumni continued to pull us along in their career trajectory – from junior contributor to the principal architect. The trust and credibility Big Nerd Ranch built with boot camp alumni and book readers were igniting the company’s relationships with mature organizations also seeking training for their teams. So training relationships also grew into partnerships where our engineers built digital products independently or alongside clients’ embedded teams. In fact, indisputable giants within the tech space continue to partner with Big Nerd Ranch today.

Why Change?

A change was inevitable. Responding to the demands of the market, Big Nerd Ranch began partnering with start-ups and technology teams within mature corporations. The consumer ecosystem of boot camp alumni and book readers that Big Nerd Ranch was used to, suddenly changed.

• Business clients’ needs were different
• Legacy success metrics no longer applied
• The competitive landscape looked more polished
• Industry events were on a much greater scale

After validating its value proposition, Big Nerd Ranch turned its focus to its brand – its reputation. It was critical to understanding if the company’s existing visual identity system resonates or alienates the new business audience without compromising the emotional ties that alumni have with the well-known logo of a cowboy hat with a propeller on top. But before deciding on the aesthetics, the leadership team had to invest in a 9-month corporate strategy session led by third-party consultants. It was important to gain alignment on which direction the company wanted to grow and how to operationalize it.

The Process

Big Nerd Ranch selected their Atlanta neighbor, Matchstic, as their Brand Identity consultant to facilitate this 12-month process of dissecting Big Nerd Ranch, the competitive landscape, and the market as a whole. After diligent research, leadership retreats, weekly leadership meetings, third-party consultants, and client focus groups and surveys, the leadership team at Big Nerd Ranch felt confident they landed on the right look and feel.

Big Nerd Ranch has evolved into an organization much more mature than it was 12 months ago. To support this mature evolution, we’ve updated our visual identity system to something our alumni and long-time advocates will recognize and continue to embrace while giving us a bit more buttoned up presentation to our business clients. The propeller has been lowered and transformed into an infinity symbol which is associated with perfection, duality, and empowerment. We deliver perfect code which is released in dual form. We empower our alumni and clients with the skills and confidence needed to develop beautiful code.

The thicker typography makes a bolder statement. And the color system has been tweaked to a warm palette to represent the warmth and empathy of our team.

While our developers write best-selling books and have access to some of the most exclusive technology hubs on the planet, they are also authentic and kind. Our engineers are teachers-at-heart and want to protect the integrity of our digital future. They break out of their shells to take the stage to lead talks, manage community meetups and volunteer their time and skills in a variety of capacities.

Our New Look: A Mature Evolution

Big Nerd Ranch’s new look is a visual way of making the following statements to the industry:

We have shifted our position in the market to include a b2b audience.
Our training reputation is fundamental to our success – that’s why we’re different.
Big Nerd Ranch didn’t endure the test of time, we capitalized on it.
While we’ve buttoned up a bit, we intentionally look different from our competitors.

We don’t want to look like everyone else because we aren’t like anyone else. Our consultants can go deeper than most because of the comprehensive research and market validation required from authoring books, as well as the industry-wide insight gained from training and engaging with top corporate developers from all over the world.

Keep an eye out for more updates––including a brand new website–as we leverage our training reputation to build brilliant digital products with start-ups and mature organizations.

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Activist John Burnside once said, “That’s the wonderful thing about nerds: They’re enthusiasts. Not having a life means you get to love things with a passion and nobody bothers you about it.”

At Big Nerd Ranch, we are proud that our team is so enthusiastic and passionate about the projects that we get to work on. We partner with amazing clients to bring their visions to life via technology, and together we create amazing results. That’s exactly how Big Nerd Ranch landed a spot on the highly respected Top UX Designers in Atlanta list that was recently published by Clutch.

So why is this a big deal for us? It’s because Clutch is a global leader when it comes to ranking and referring technology companies to small to mid-sized businesses from around the world. They scour the globe to find the most reputable and accomplished tech companies and then create a leader’s matrix list made up of those who stood out in the crowd. From there, they announce this list so that companies can find the tech help they need based on location, budget and technology focus. Out of the dozens of companies Clutch reviewed, Big Nerd came out as one of the top!

Customer reviews are an important part of this process so that Clutch can confirm that the tech companies are reliable, easy to work with and that they deliver results. Here are some of the incredible things that our clients said about Big Nerd Ranch to gain us recognition:

“I can’t quantify how valuable it is that Big Nerd Ranch not only helped us build the initial product but they helped us establish best practices for our own software development team.… Today, we are able to build significantly faster and with higher quality than any of our competition.”

• President & Co-Founder, PartCycle Technologies

“Big Nerd Ranch stands out as the best company I’ve worked with in my 30 years in the industry. They delivered on time and within our app budget consistently.”

• CFO, Care+ Ventures, LLC

“Big Nerd Ranch is a team full of great listeners. Even more so than that, they’re very solutions-oriented and not only do they build great products and develop smartly, the work they do at the requirements and discovery stage is what sets them apart.”

• Director of Marketing, Orkin Pest Control

In our minds, a nerd is someone who is hardworking, dedicated, visionary, daring and excited about being the best in a certain field. We are nerds working with clients who are nerds and we’re rocking the competition. It’s like Bill Gates once said, “Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”

From product ideation to distribution, Big Nerd Ranch is world-renowned for building best-in-class mobile solutions. We’d be delighted to work with you on designing and building your UI, APIs, or all of it towards an app that positively impacts your business goals.

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Technology leaders share the challenges of many other business leaders who struggle to demonstrate the alignment of their function with the rest of the organization. In a November 9 webinar on The New Face of CTO/CIO: More Than the Gatekeeper of Technology hosted by Big Nerd Ranch, 100% of survey respondents admitted they could do a better job in this area. So how do we fix this?

Results are hard to measure

Sales metrics and goals have come a long way. Sure IT, Software, and Technology teams can track uptime, but that’s a lagging indicator, not a leading one. How do technology teams delivering value know that their next month (or quarter, or year) are going to be great? And, further, that they are building software and technology that enables companies to excel?

Try a Modified NPS score just for your team

One Tech Leader we interviewed uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question (and a slight variation) quarterly across the company to measure how well their organization is doing and thus aligning with the company’s stated goals.

This leader customized the question to their organization’s function. In the case of IT, one tech leader modified the question to say:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s software delivery method (our use of tools, trackers, and tickets) to a friend or a colleague?

This plus some open-ended feedback led to some fundamental changes on how they build apps for their company.

Tip: In the webinar we share a way to do this simply using Google Forms.

Align using a system like OKRs

More and more companies are adopting Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to align and for good reasons: these systems allow organizations to align around big goals, focuses effort, communicates strategy accurately, and much more.

One technology leader interviewed set key results for “nudging” employees to engage in informal professional learning like watching screencasts/webinars, participating in the internal company learning management system in addition to the traditional corporate training, to align up towards an objective of the organization to encourage life-long learning.

For more tips from leaders of technology teams on aligning, be sure to check out The New Face of CTO/CIO: More Than the Gatekeeper of Technology webinar replay. Interested in discovery, design, or app development? Reach out to Big Nerd Ranch today to talk about how we can work with your team.

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