One Panel: Building brand infrastructure that outlasts the brand

Brand as infrastructure.
Built to survive change.

Evolving Nicequest into the design system behind GfK's global panel ecosystem, resilient enough to survive a full brand rollback.

My role

Led brand architecture, visual identity, and design systems alongside Jennie Magill (Head of UX) and UX/UI designers David Martinez, Santi Sanchez, and Arnau Clavero, working across Product, Engineering, Legal, Panel Operations, and global stakeholders.

1. Where One Panel was

Business Context & Business Goals

GfK operated multiple B2C panels across different markets, each built independently over time.

Different identities. Different UX patterns. Different customer ID systems. The same person could exist as separate accounts across countries, with no shared login, profile, or operational infrastructure.

The fragmentation wasn't visual alone. It was infrastructural. One Panel was created to unify both layers at once: brand architecture and customer identity systems across the ecosystem. This wasn't a rebrand. It was platform integration.

The goal was a single system that could launch panels faster, at lower operational cost, and stay coherent across every market, while being resilient enough to survive organisational change.

2. Many panels, zero foundation

Problem (User + Business)

The problem was never just visual. It operated across three layers at once.

For the business, the fragmented panels meant duplicated effort, slow launches, and high operational cost. Each market reinvented identity and infrastructure from scratch. The business needed one identity system, faster launches, and infrastructure resilient enough to survive organisational change.

For users, the experience was inconsistent across products, exactly when behavioural data collection was becoming more sensitive. People needed consistent, trustworthy experiences and transparency about how their data was used.

For teams, there was no shared operational system. Brand, Product, and Engineering were solving the same problems separately in every market.

Solving only the visual layer wouldn't fix the infrastructure. Solving only the infrastructure wouldn't fix the experience. The system had to unify all three.

3. Why Nicequest

Approach & Rationale

Three paths were on the table. Create a new standalone panel brand, a clean slate with no existing trust. Extend the GfK B2B brand into consumer products, easier internally but a poor fit for a consumer audience. Or build the unified ecosystem on Nicequest.

We chose Nicequest. It already had something more valuable than recognition: real trust with panelists. Trust created the foundation. The system made it scalable.

From there, every brand decision was pushed from subjective preference toward organisational alignment. When the first logo direction hit trademark conflicts across markets, two new directions were developed and validated through stakeholder research, including colleagues with no prior involvement in the project. The system was named Evolv, validated through trademark checks, competitive analysis, and regional research.

The point wasn't taste. It was building a brand the whole organisation could stand behind.

4. Building the system

Execution

The real deliverable wasn't the identity. It was the infrastructure underneath it.

Evolv was built as a modular, tokenised system: one codebase, one component system, one shared infrastructure across the ecosystem. Brand values like colour and typography lived in design tokens. Shared UI components, adaptive layouts, Figma libraries, and Storybook documentation let distributed teams across Europe and Latin America build without rebuilding consistency each time. The framework evolved over roughly 18 months.

Then the rollback happened. Leadership decided the Nicequest brand direction would not move forward. Under normal conditions, that decision triggers a full redesign.

Instead, because the architecture was tokenised, the transition became a configuration-level change. Brand values could be updated at the token layer without rebuilding components, interfaces, or logic. The system wasn't designed around rollback scenarios. It was designed around adaptability, and that is what let it absorb one.

5. What changed

Outcomes / Key Insights

The project changed more than the identity layer. Trademark risk was resolved before deployment, brand equity was preserved through the transition, and a major strategic pivot was absorbed without rework.

Brand, Legal, Product, Engineering, and Panel Operations moved from fragmented decision-making to a shared operational framework. Identity decisions became research-backed rather than preference-driven.

Most importantly, the system reduced the cost of change itself. Products could evolve without restarting infrastructure every time priorities shifted. The real deliverable was a repeatable model: a way for the organisation to make platform and brand decisions without rebuilding from zero each time.

6. What I learned

Learnings

Brand architecture is infrastructure.

The trademark conflicts, the governance reviews, the multi-market validation, the executive rollback: none of those were edge cases. They are what large-scale systems eventually encounter.

The system held because it was designed for organisational reality, not ideal conditions. That is the difference between a brand that looks finished and a system that survives.

Systems aren't defined by stability. They're defined by adaptability under change.

7. Impact

Three measurable shifts after rollout, across user satisfaction, usability, and system scale.

75% User satisfaction post-launch

N=751 active users, AskGfK Austria, the first panel migrated to Evolv, post-launch survey 2024. 30% very satisfied, 45% satisfied, 24% neutral, 2% dissatisfied.

Driver: The Evolv design system, a coherent, trust-first portal experience built on the Nicequest foundation.

85% Rated user-friendliness good or very good

Same survey base, AskGfK Austria, 2024. 35% very good, 50% good, 14% average, 1% negative.

Driver: Consistent UI patterns across panels, built on the tokenised architecture.

8 markets Unified under one system

Evolv deployed across GfK's global panel ecosystem over 18 months, with AskGfK Austria as the first market migrated.
Driver: Tokenised architecture that scaled across languages and absorbed a full executive brand rollback without rework.

Brand identity

The new visual identity for the unified panel ecosystem. The arc system extends the Nicequest visual language to carry a wider product family: access panels, media measurement, and client panels under one mark. Bold colour, recognisable at every scale.

Many panels, zero foundation

GfK's B2C panel portfolio across 8 markets. Over a dozen panels built independently, each with its own logo, UI patterns, and behaviour flows. No shared infrastructure between them.

Images generated with NanoBanana

Naming and logo

Two parallel processes: a name that works across markets and languages, and a mark that survives at every scale. Structured surveys sent to One Panel stakeholders and a selection of GfK colleagues with no prior connection to the project. Evolv was the clear favourite.

Logo family

The brand architecture mapped across the panel portfolio. Access panels, media measurement panels, and client panels each inherit from the same foundation. One system, configured by panel type.

Current state audit

Every panel documented across all markets before anything was redesigned. Screen inventories, component patterns, and interaction flows, mapped and compared. Eight markets. No two panels built the same way.

The infrastructure layer, design tokens controlling colour, typography, and behaviour across the ecosystem.

The system output layer, production-ready templates translating the framework into real panel experiences across markets.

Engineering handoff, documented components inside Storybook reducing design dependency during implementation.

Design system

Brand and functional UI layers kept separate through tokens. Swap the brand values, the product stays intact. One component library, configurable to any panel in the portfolio. The system is the infrastructure the identity runs on.

Product

The Evolv platform built on the component library. Homepage, survey flows, reward catalogue, account management, and support: each screen assembled from the same components, configured through brand tokens.

After the rollback

When GfK leadership reversed the brand direction, AskGfK replaced Evolv across every surface. The components stayed the same. Only the values changed.

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DESIGN-DEPT.

Barcelona, Spain
Phone: +34 622 712 521
Email: fabioestellita@gmail.com
Linkedin: /in/fabioestellita/