Brand Refresh for Greatist
Brand refresh and style guide for the New York City based health and fitness media startup.
The Challenge
Greatist had spent the past 6 years building a reputation as the destination for accessible, down-to-earth health and fitness content. The company had a basic logo, type, and color palette, but needed a brand identity system that could be applied across the different mediums and properties within the company.
The Solution
I directed an internal team of designers and photographers to develop a comprehensive brand identity system that reflected the unique personality of the company while remaining flexible enough to allow for growth and evolution.
As with every project, I started with research. I set up interviews with employees at Greatist, read over comments and emails from users, and created notes detailing what made the brand unique.
Developing a brand identity system is only successful if creative team is consulted on projects and the system is adopted company-wide. In tandem with the development of the brand identity system, I rolled out a project organization system for the creative team. The project organization system allowed teams in the company to more easily collaborate with the creative team and provided visibility into the team’s project pipeline.
Once the creative team’s role in the company was clearly defined, I designed and rolled out a revised set of brand guidelines. The updated guidelines provided a range of approved expressions across different mediums and properties.
As a company, Greatist understands that health and wellness isn’t, “one-size-fits-all”. Every individual needs to discover what makes them happy and healthy. That understanding became a key part of the brand identity system. When applied to typography, we created a range of expressions from using color to decorate type, combining type with hand-drawn accents, and finally type that was completely hand-drawn. This allowed our typographic applications to become a visual expression of the uniqueness of each individual in our audience.
Greatist’s photography also embodied the brand’s approach to health and wellness. The photography featured pops of bright color and the images were friendly, and approachable. The photography showcased a variety of body-types and ethnicities. Food and products were shown in a slightly less-than-perfect arrangement and presentation.
Given that hand-drawn accents and typography was such a big part of the brand expression, a section was included in the brand identity system addressing how to combine hand-drawn elements with photography. The result was a playful and unique way to add personality to recipes, guides, and other content.
A section was also included addressing the importance of depicting different ethnicities and body types in both photography and illustration. Greatist wasn’t trying to idealize a perfect image of fitness and health. Every body is beautiful and every body can be healthy.
The website was designed to showcase the photography and illustration and allow the content to be easily accessible on different devices.
Learn more about Greatist’s website design.
Greatist’s social media accounts became a place to express the stories of real people discovering what makes them happy and healthy. We interviewed people on the street, asking them questions, and taking their photos. We combined the photography with a hand-drawn expression of a quote from their interview. These expressions created a mosaic of real-world health and happiness inspiration.
Learn more about Greatist’s social media campaign.
We approached video by creating a “toolbox” of hand-drawn elements that could be readily applied to workout, cooking, and other video types. A distinct logo animation was developed that expressed the brand’s personality. Unique hand-drawn titles were created for special project videos.
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