In 2018, we refreshed our visual identity so that our product and brand are as inclusive as our mission. We’re here to empower individuals to live healthy and active lifestyles, and it was crucial that our design was reflective of that. So, we rolled up our sleeves and opened our design toolbox. 🧰
Peerfit is a 100% remote company and focuses on employee engagement and happiness. Its product enables Peerfit users to customize their own health and wellness journeys with the fun of peers, and its identity is colorful and modern. Wellness can seem like a lofty undertaking, but Peerfit aims to make fitness accessible and enjoyable for all.
We’re using design to make personal wellness approachable, fun, and, ultimately, honest. We’re playful, but not silly. We’re a little cheeky on occasion, but never cocky. Yes, we want to be motivating and empowering people to work out, but we also understand that we’re all human. Sometimes we need a rest day. Sometimes we need a coworker to hold us accountable. Sometimes we just need a slice of pizza. It’s 👏 hard 👏 work 👏!
We realized that in order for our brand to be as inclusive and accessible as possible, our visual language needed to highlight the human reality of fitness, and, for us, illustration was going to be the tool to do it. Here’s how.
Illustration and Design Systems
Illustrated elements have a way of bringing together disparate pieces of a brand’s identity and imbuing involved processes with approachability. There are many considerations: brand equity, scalability, current trends, business needs, and marketing goals, to name a few.
We wanted the illustration style and system to have personality and be recognizable, but still be cohesive. So, we looked at our brand guidelines for guidance.
Our brand guidelines provide those working with Peerfit assets with visual references, principles, and techniques (and basic do’s and don’ts), in order to keep the brand looking and feeling consistent. Naturally, our illustrations became an extension of our brand identity and tenants — simplicity, personalization, and community.
We have an in-house Design team at Peerfit, and designers who create illustrations for our social media and digital product. As such, the style and system have now moved beyond any one designer, and introducing illustration into our brand blood has made it stronger and more unique. ✨
Building Illustration Into Our Design
Our illustration style truly took shape after our aforementioned rebrand. We knew we had a new WCAG-compliant color palette, but the rest was a blank slate. As a freelancer (at the time), I was given the opportunity to create a series of illustrations of characters working out for a new series of ads. The rest is history.
I started with brand research, assessing the visual landscape of the health and wellness industry and looking to other companies with mixed media content. How did we want to present ourselves in this space? How could we be on-trend, but without blending in?
Challenge accepted. Armed with mood boards, I drew a wide range of different styles for a single fitness character. The characters had varying levels of color (flat colors to heavy use of our pink to blue gradient), shape (geometric to organic), and characterization (stylized to anatomical). With the combined power of the marketing and design teams, we landed on a style.
From there, our style approach extended beyond advertising materials into our social media, as we pivoted our focus to shareable content. Our Senior Content Marketing Strategist and I already worked side by side, but at that point, we basically became attached at the hip. By incorporating illustration into our overall social media strategy, we were able to address a key question: how can we use illustration to make people laugh, make us more relatable, or generally make people feel something?
So, we started playing with puns. A lot. We applied the style we had created for our fitness characters to inanimate objects, like weightlifting avocados, to create consistency across channels and mediums, and, ultimately, create new characters. We dove into the world of Instagram Story stickers, and we looked at the data at the end of each month to determine which design elements were performing best, in order to inform our future decisions.
While we’ve approached our characters the same ever since, and our inanimate objects have a complementary look, we’ve had to make some adjustments retroactively. The reality of illustration, like the reality of fitness, is that it requires hard work, upkeep, and a little flexibility. 🎨
Our Brand as a Living and Breathing Entity
Peerfit is a human and design-centric company. It’s user-friendly and forward-thinking. While there will inevitably be growing pains to tackle in the years to come, our brand will continue to evolve alongside our users and with emerging technology. What makes a Peerfit illustration a Peerfit illustration today will inevitably change. A brand is never “finished,” and ours will grow as Peerfit continues to.
So what does the future of Peerfit look like, like actually look like? All we can promise you is that it’ll be true to our mission of empowering individuals to live healthy and active lifestyles, and, as Bowie said, “it won’t be boring.” ⚡️
Adrienne Johnson is a Visual Designer at Peerfit. She’s a multidisciplinary creative, outdoor lover, and compulsive traveler, always trip planning and illustrating while speeding through series.
