Futr
Human face
Founded in 2017, a British tech company Futr delivers AI-powered conversations across messaging channels from government to business, over 1,000 organisations, translating into 120 languages in real-time.
Their new emotional identity was designed by Lantern, in London.
The time-saving, ease of use benefits of Futr’s chatbot platform are huge, but they were struggling to tell their story with clarity and conviction. We simplified their story to focus on customer benefits and reasons to believe. From brand manifesto and messaging to artwork and guidelines, the repositioning delivers an identity with visual impact and verbal clarity; delivered with the credibility and authority required for a brand that promises to transform business.
From the insight gained through our stakeholder workshops we developed a new strategy for Futr to clearly articulate the benefits of their chatbot systems. Our market research revealed a lack of awareness of chatbot platforms, concerns over data security risks and AI replacing staff. This helped shape our brand story and messaging.
A new strapline ‘Liberation through conversation’ now ensures Futr’s core purpose is quickly and simply communicated and reflects its intention to make life easier for everyone through simple and meaningful chat.
Logo
Messaging, including phrases such as ‘Automagical chatbots’, ‘Imagine an HR team fluent in 120 languages’ and ‘Imagine a police force with an instant response time’ — all help to communicate the emotional benefit of Futr to its customers in a way that is playful and accessible.
The human qualities of Futr are now reflected in the new logo design. The icon is both an “F” and a human face that could be winking at you. It’s an avatar that people will interact with, and a radical departure from the abstract shapes and chat bubbles that dominate this sector.
Application
Thoughts
Like the design team said above, it is definitely that talking bubbles and abstract brain images like you can look by googling “artificial intelligence logo” are overflowing (and so boring!). So, the idea — bringing human touch to AI— was already a big step. But you can also see “smiling logo” everywhere. But this execution is awesome. Making the bar of “F” as a winking eye is distinctive and gives friendly feels, and they didn’t mention but its smile also looks subtly “U”. So the logo has half letters of its name! It’s not just adding forcibly “Amazon-like smile” under the words. And, of course, the face changes expressions! Cute! Actually, I was first wondering if the color and the font could have been much “future”— neon colors and geometric sans serif font like every tech company does. But as a BtoB company, it needed also to represent faithful, I guess. So the just right colors and subtly balanced font —combined the forms of mid-century grotesks with rigid angles— are suit for the brand.
All photos © and more on Lantern project page
