Project: Brand Identity and web design

Client: Know You More

Sector: Coaching

Responsibilities: Brand articulation, User research, Strategy, UX and UI Design, Copywriting & Tone of Voice

The challenge: Know You More (KYM) is a well-respected digital coaching company that has been providing organisations with an external coaching provision for their leaders. This is primarily powered by their platform and a global community of external coaches. They launched their service using a Minimum Viable Product approach and came to us to help them take their digital presence to the next level, productise their offering and fully launch the service.

Our Approach

To kick things off, we needed to help define the USPs of Know You More and establish the core brand values that set them apart in a crowded space. We started by talking to as any people as possible about their experience with KYM and similar organisations. We interviewed existing clients, lost clients as well as internal staff, to understand exactly what makes the experience working with KYM so appealing and how it compares with previous experience. It quickly became apparent that both clients and staff shared some key common values which informed the aspects of KYM’s proposition that we needed to emphasise. The four key values we identified through our research were:

Status as a socially-conscious organisation
KYM’s approach to giving back to society through their young person coaching programme ‘LevelUp’ is seen as a key driver when choosing to work with or for them.

Strong human connection
The team at KYM is a key selling point, people we interviewed really valued the people in the organisation and their friendly approachable style. This had to come across on the website and beyond.

Coaching at scale
The model adopted by KYM means they work hard to train the team members at the organisations they work for to become coaches themselves. This allows their clients to develop their own coaching provision alongside what is provided by KYM. This is supported by KYM’s industry leading technology.

Thought leadership
It is clear among the people we spoke to that KYM’s viewpoint on coaching is extremely valued. Ensuring the latest industry developments and the wider leadership context is conveyed effectively on their website would prove key.

We kept these themes, as well as others, front-of-mind as we analysed business needs, considered technical constraints and moved into design.

Brand Personality

We ran a brand and tone of voice workshop with the team at Know You More to establish a clear brand vision and to give us the foundation to create a refreshed visual language. The team wanted to keep their existing logo mark, but it needed to better reflect the brand personality, appeal to their existing customers and resonate with new ones, all the while standing out from the competition. We identified priority brand attributes during the workshop, and used these to develop a brighter and more vibrant identity that looks and feels more energetic, positive and enthusiastic.

We explored various different colour palettes and logo treatments and looked at more interesting font pairings, photography and illustration styles before settling on a direction to take forward.

For the final logo, we took the original symbol and crafted it into an altogether more “friendly” mark, with rounded corners and a bolder line weight that is optimal for use at smaller sizes on-screen. This is balanced with a matching logotype that has equal weighting to the symbol, and is set in sentence-case to appear more approachable than the previous, capitalised version.

Flexible Brand Language

We extended the brand language by introducing playful shapes, which were created by deconstructing the KYM symbol. They provide a visual link back to the logo, and can be used throughout the website to create visual interest and reinforce the brand personality. It’s easy to dial up or down the “volume” of the brand language depending on the audience - from professional, corporate clients in large organisations to young people and graduates. The natural photography style helps to bring people to the forefront.

All of this is documented in a brand style guide and design system.

Accessible and inclusive website design

The resulting website is built in line with our inclusive design principles and is accessible and responsive. We carefully consider colour palettes to ensure WCAG 2.0 AA contrast standards are met and use focus states, clear visual indicators and conventional interfaces to help users navigate and understand where they are, and to allow for assistive technology.

We even picked a brand typeface, called Lexend, that actually helps people to read - the sans-serif font reduces cognitive noise and is proven to improve reading performance for those with dyslexia and other struggling readers.

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Furthermore is an evidence-led, product & service design agency based in London, UK. We believe that the research and strategy behind great design is just as important as the design itself. By gathering data and insights to inform our decisions, we help organisations create compelling services and products based on evidence, not opinion. A hypothesis driven design framework helps us achieve this. Using our methods we envision unique experiences built on a solid functional foundation that are a pleasure to use and have the potential for meaning, delight and significance in people’s lives. Please get in touch if you would like to know more.