A little over a year ago, I joined TrackMaven as employee number four and designer number one. My year has been filled with two website redesigns, marketing collateral of all sorts, a one-day conference’s brand and collateral, more email templates than I can recall, several new features to the TrackMaven platform, art-direction for our upcoming explainer video, project management in the development of certain features, and even some embarrassing voice overs. I’m still designer number one but 2014 has a lot in store for our design “team” so I wanted to take a moment to look back over the last year and recap some of the important things I’ve learned.

1) Understand the Brand First

One of the benefits, but also challenges, of being the only designer is having the ability to touch literally every piece of the brand. The fonts, the colors, the logo, the icons, what radius for the round corners, what font do we use for a particular call to action? These and so many more are a constant reminder that a startup is always moving, always changing, and as the lead designer, I have a great voice in what direction they move.

I learned that a brand is a living creature, much like Maven! There are always going to be random scenarios that pop up that require the TrackMaven aesthetic and they don’t always have a solution. This means developing the brand on the go, but also categorizing it for everyone else, so that it sticks. With the help of other Mavens, we make sure our internal materials are updated to Maven standards and reflect the care and attention to detail that I believe we should have in every project, even a sales onboarding schedule. I believe it helps establish the value we place on all things TrackMaven, including the small details.

When I started, I dove right into working on UI elements and thinking about interactions on our product. The activity feed was one of the first things I touched, and I went through many iterations and pulled out quite a few hairs. My problem? I didn’t have a consistent visual to apply. Past my sketches on how to present the information, choosing which elements of a feed item stand out and which recede was something that I struggled with. It wasn’t until I spent some time understanding the visual identity I wanted to portray that I was able to settle into G.S.D.

By developing our brand, I formed a system that allowed us to tell the story to marketers that helped them solve their problems. Which brings me to my next point..

2) Create a system first, before focusing on features

Now, when the activity feed was the first real feature of our product, it was hard to form a system past how all those different types of metrics are displayed in a similar fashion. But as we started forming new features, like our brand profiles, or our alerts system, one thing became clear. I was focusing on each feature and what interesting and intuitive tactics I could take to present it. This led to a bit of a hodgepodge when it came to helping the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

As a result, I now take into consideration the current state of a feature, its possible next iteration, and the other features it connects to. We can see if a design pattern we’re using elsewhere makes sense for another part of the product, which also means less friction and less learning for the user. This year will consist of a lot of refining our features to be a piece of a larger system, which just makes the product better and easier to use.

3) Pick your battles

I only have so many hands, so many eyes, so many hours in the day. I’ve been a copywriter, an art director, a manager, a researcher, an information architect, a visual designer — all are required of me and I can only be in so many places at once. As a result, I’ve learned to pick my battles, and also consider my work.

There will always be something for a designer at a startup to do, and I keep a tally of those things in Trello. But it comes down to determining the ROI of what you’re working on. If an icon needs updated, how long is it going to take me to design it? How long will it take to get pushed to production? Speaking of which, what is in the engineering queue? Will anyone get to it in the next month? Will the end user notice? Will it affect their ability to complete key tasks in the tool? These are all questions that come into focus when choosing what to tackle next. Nine times out of ten, that last question is the most important. Which is why larger features and improvements tend to win out over smaller bits.

I believe in fighting for the details, because the details are what make a product, a website, an app, an experience special. As the TrackMaven design team grows, our product is going to get even more special.

4) Design shouldn’t be an afterthought

I’ve not seen anything like this and that’s good thing!

Kudos to the UX design team for keeping it simple.

Which isn’t an easy task!

There are plenty of products out there that do pieces of what TrackMaven does. Some of them are even well designed. But it’s the combination of these two that makes TrackMaven what it is. I’ve poured everything I am into thinking about how to present complex data in a simple format, while still showing that the product is vast and technical, how to maintain a friendly, quirky brand while still being a thought leader in the marketing space (with a lot of that falling on Sabel’s shoulders, of course). We want our users to easily use TrackMaven, but we also want it to be useful.

By focusing on design at the beginning, we were able to build a product from the ground up that focused on clear visuals and simple interactions. And the results have been extremely positive. TrackMaven has received plenty of comments from customers, prospects and outsiders agreeing that it is friendly, easy to use and that it’s mind-boggling that there is so much in such a simple package.

So what’s in store?

If 2013 was a mountain to climb, 2014 will be our Everest. I learned so much about myself, where I stand on design and the type of company I want to help TrackMaven become. This year I’ll be focusing on those details, building a team that will help grow TrackMaven to be the best with no question. Design will mean more than just brand and aesthetic, we’ll be polishing our UX even more and building processes that help get the things we know our customers want (even those things they might not think about) out to them faster.

So here’s to 2014, another year of beautiful design at TrackMaven, and another year of making sure we give marketers the proactive advantage they need. You can join the design journey at TrackMaven by following me on twitter — @grafxnerd.