Client interview — Kurt Boyd, Stack 52

Kurt Boyd is the president and current owner of Stack 52, an exercise game company on a mission to make workouts fun and accessible. Kurt and I go back a long way — over the last years, he has become one of my regular clients and a good friend. He has a tremendous passion and drive for constantly improving his brand and products and his product development skills are phenomenal.

Kurt first approached me a few years ago as he was struggling with an amazing product that was held back by sub-par branding and packaging. We rebranded the company and products and have been working on launching new products with packaging and illustration work ever since.

Kurt, could you introduce yourself to the audience, and say a few words about what you do at Stack 52?

I am the owner of Stack 52. Stack 52 makes fitness fun and easy for everyone. We give you a deck of cards or a set of dice with exercises on them. You draw cards or roll the dice, and that is your workout. You don’t need to read books or need a lot of exercise equipment. All of our exercises use minimal equipment or even no equipment for the bodyweight, flexibility, and yoga decks. You learn as you go. We offer QR codes for each exercise where you can watch a quick video demonstration and explanation of the exercise. A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and we make taking the first step easy and taking the next step fun. Every workout is different, and you never know what you will do next.

What challenges were you facing when you hired me to rebrand the company and redesign the product line? Did the work that we did for the brand solve those pain points?

I am an engineer. I designed a lot of our products, and my designs worked well but they were not beautiful. Exercise cards and games were gaining popularity, and some of our competitor’s products looked better than ours. I worked with you to redesign all of our products and make them beautiful. Now, I don’t believe anyone has more beautiful products than we do, and our sales increased dramatically.

These are some of the exercise cards and games we worked on for the rebrand:

What was it like working with me? What did you get out of the experience? Are there any weak points in my process or style that you think I should focus on?

We are good friends, so I am probably biased. Once we discovered how to work together, I wouldn’t change anything about you. In the beginning, I remember you offered me what I felt were very “generic” designs for the Quick Sweat Dice, and I asked you to be more creative, and I think I frustrated you. But we found a design theme we both loved, and after that, we loved working together and became very good friends. I consider you to be like a brother, like family.

Is there anything you would change about how the project unfolded if you could go back in time?

No. I think we achieved excellence together, and I don’t know how to make it better or I would.

Where are you headed next with Stack 52? What is the next big milestone for the brand?

I think more and more competitors will come into the market, and the market will move away from physical cards and dice in everything, not just exercises, but even regular card and dice games will become less popular as electronic everything takes over. Stack 52 will probably have to eventually pivot to an app on smartphones. I don’t know if I will be interested in leading that pivot. I think I will move on to other things.

How do you see the future of design as it relates to product development and marketing? Do you anticipate any new trends?

I don’t see any new trends. I think Steve Jobs and Apple taught us that products need to be beautiful to compete in the marketplace. New innovations will be quickly adopted by your competitors, and customers will always struggle to figure out which product is technically best because they are not technical experts. But everyone can appreciate beauty, and we recognize beauty immediately and are drawn to it. Successful products must be beautiful. I think that has been true for decades now, and I don’t see it ever changing.

You can find out more about Stack 52 and their latest products here.

And here is a case study of the rebranding project that I did for Stack 52.