SearchStax

SearchStax is an enterprise search platform helping organisations deliver fast, relevant, and scalable search across complex digital environments. Their clients include universities, healthcare systems, and large-scale commercial operations, organisations where search isn't a feature; it's infrastructure.

Over a nine-month collaboration with the marketing team, James Coulson helped establish a motion and visual storytelling system that could communicate complex product ideas clearly while remaining consistent with the company's existing brand.

Search platforms are inherently abstract: there is no physical product to show, and the technology often sits behind the scenes of large digital environments. The challenge was to develop a visual language capable of explaining technical ideas in a way that felt accessible, structured, and aligned with the brand.

Working within a tightly defined identity system, he developed a graphic language built from branded vector elements and iconography, using motion, rhythm, and composition to translate complex capabilities into clear visual narratives.

The engagement began with establishing a motion brand system that could support a growing presence of video and animation across SearchStax's marketing channels.

This included developing a logo mnemonic, animation behaviour, and guidelines for typography and colour in motion, creating a flexible visual language that could scale across product explainers, campaign content and embedded website animations while maintaining a consistent brand presence.

As part of this work, he also helped define the brand's AI voice persona, establishing tone, pacing and delivery guidelines for narration across video content. The goal was to maintain a voice that balanced technical authority with clarity and approachability, allowing the team to scale video production while keeping the brand consistent.

A key example from the engagement focused on Multi-Site Search Management, a feature designed for organisations managing large networks of websites.

The challenge was to explain a technically sophisticated capability, coordinating search across multiple domains, in a way that felt clear and immediately understandable.

Using the established visual language, the animation translates the feature into a structured narrative: illustrating the complexity of managing multiple search environments and showing how the platform simplifies the process into a single, unified system.

The result is a concise product story that makes an abstract capability visible and understandable.

In addition to longer narrative content, short looping animations were created for use directly within the SearchStax website. These lightweight product GIFs communicate key platform features in a format designed for fast scanning within product pages and marketing environments.

The collaboration established a cohesive motion language for SearchStax and introduced a structured approach to visual storytelling across brand and product communication.

By translating complex technical capabilities into clear visual narratives, the work helped support product marketing, web communication, and ongoing video content across the company's marketing ecosystem.