When developing your brand, there are a lot of general guidelines worth following: conduct an audit, choose a unifying brand theme, make sure your branding comes from a place of authenticity, etc. While this is all good advice, it can be difficult to understand how these high-level concepts manifest themselves without a concrete example — so we thought we’d provide one. Read on for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into a rebranding project we recently did with our client YOGO.
Part I: Onboarding
The first step of any branding project should always be getting to know the team. Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with a design that looks nice, but doesn’t actually represent the company.
Early on, we chatted with the YOGO team to dig into who they were and what they stood for. Usually, we do in-person meetings, but the onset of COVID-19 meant that a video call was the smartest option — no chatting over coffee and pastries for us, unfortunately. The YOGO team shared that they’re a direct-to-consumer ecommerce yoga company that uses innovative supply chains to achieve end-to-end sustainability — think: using low-waste factories to turn algae into yoga mats with minimal packaging. They even plant a tree for every purchase.
The sustainability factor was a big differentiator for them. YOGO’s founder, Jessica Thompson, has a background as an environmental consultant — she’s an expert in energy analytics, green consumer products, and environmentally-friendly manufacturing. She started YOGO in 2014 after seeing how many companies claim to be sustainable, but actually aren’t (sigh). While the company itself was innovating in some really cool ways, the brand wasn’t at the time. Jessica wanted a modern, fresh brand that would reflect their avant-garde approach.
Beyond learning about the company’s background, we did a lightning round of questions — things like:
What’s your target audience?
What are your strengths and challenges?
What do you envision for the company’s future?
I threw in a few fun ones, too, like “If YOGO could be a mascot, what would it be?” and “What’s your go-to happy hour spot for the team?” to help give a little extra color.
Part II: Brand Audit
After talking to the YOGO team, it was time to explore the current branding — website, social media, press, company swag, you name it — to get a sense of where it was at that moment and what it would take to get them to the next level.
Doing this after you’ve already discussed the brand in-depth with the client might seem redundant, but you could be surprised by what you find when you turn over every rock. One thing that came up in our LinkedIn research that wasn’t emphasized as much on our call was the fact that YOGO mats are foldable, making them great for travel and commuting (during non-COVID times) or for small, urban apartments and bringing along to your favorite park during shelter-in-place orders.
Another theme was supply chain transparency. A lot of companies’ supply chains are just handed off from one vendor to the next with little oversight from executives. But YOGO had a sustainable supply chain through and through, and would share insight into each step to empower consumers with the knowledge they needed to choose a truly eco-friendly product. They aimed to do so in a way that was light and friendly, though — not stuffy or convoluted.
We also considered where the brand was being seen in order to help guide our ideas. For example, because YOGO was ecommerce-only, we focused on digital design needs like email newsletters and product landing pages instead of physical signage or banners.
Part III: Branding Workshop
Earlier in my career, I would go right from researching to creating initial drafts. The problem with that, though, is that it doesn’t give you a good sense of a client’s aesthetic preferences. You might create a design that you think is catchy and representative, but it just isn’t the client’s taste. To get a sense of what clients like and don’t like visually, we do branding workshops now.
Often, this will take the form of mood boards. After our research phase, we compiled a bunch of images of brands that exemplified the directions we were interested in. We presented a few different categories: among them was one that mixed photographs and illustrations; one that was super graphic with lots of bright, bold colors; and one that was more abstract, with heavy use of organic shapes and patterns.
I was actually a little surprised to find out that YOGO was way more drawn to the modern style since it seemed so different than the look they were going for on their Instagram — which just goes to show you how important this step is!
Part IV: Drafts & Revision
Once we got a sense of which visual styles appealed to YOGO, we came up with two initial brand identity drafts. The first was closer to their current branding but elevated.
We thought it was great that the YOGO mat could be folded up and taken anywhere, so we embraced that with a natural color palette and lots of outdoor photography, which has the added benefit of being way more cost-effective than studio photography. It also had a lot of room for flexibility, and would make for a fairly easy transition — the difference wouldn’t be too jarring for the audience.
The other was completely fresh. We created something modern, friendly, fun, and innovative that would speak to their target audience of young, urban professionals. This is the one we ultimately landed on. YOGO felt the most important thing to highlight was the innovative aspect of their brand, which their current design wasn’t really allowing their audience to see.
Over the next few revisions, we balanced the modern look with some natural elements in the photography and doodle-like illustrations that could be paired with the more technical supply chain information to help it seem fun and approachable. We ended up getting to a place that felt right for the brand. It had all the aspects we wanted — fresh, inclusive, inspired, energized — so we started to move it over to its final form.
Part V: Brand Guidelines
With most of the visual aspects of the brand finalized — typography, photography, illustrations — the last piece of the puzzle was drafting rules about how everything should be implemented. We created examples for each aspect and showed how they would look across different mediums: on the website, on social media, in print.
As the brand started to take shape, it became clear that color blocking would be an important element, so we tweaked the palette to be more comprehensive. We leaned on mostly natural, saturated, almost-but-not-quite vintage colors to provide some warmth to complement the modern look.
You might get nervous if the first color palette you’re presented isn’t what you envisioned, but if that happens, don’t worry — any good designer will work with you to get your brand where you want it to be. We initially used a lot of green and yellow, but the YOGO team thought it was a bit much for a brand that was so clean and fresh, so we pivoted to allow for more breathing room. After thinking about how the colors would work together, we ended up with a more monochrome palette versus one with strong contrast.
After a few tweaks, YOGO really came to like the brand identity we had created — check out the final project or full brand book.
Reading this post, you probably get the feeling that branding is an extensive, detailed process — and it is. But that shouldn’t scare you off. Taking the time to build a relationship with your design team will allow them to better understand your brand, learn about your aesthetic preferences, and give you a product that you’re happier with. And ultimately, that makes the extra effort worthwhile.
Anastasia Salazar Ltd. is an independent design studio for tailored branding and digital designs. Reach out to learn how we can help you fuel growth and maximize your brand’s impact.