PurPics

VISUAL STYLE for micro-influencer marketing startup

A lot of the branding process takes place before our clients even think about hiring us. Brands are developed at the start of a business through their interactions with their clients. They evolve through every point of contact… whether it’s a Instagram post, offer, or the copy on their website.

Our job is to identify the existing brand and display it visually… which is why designing for PurPics was an exciting opportunity!

PurPics is a startup that connects brands with students who promote their products in order to earn donations to a charity. It’s a whole new take on micro-influencing and it’s taking off. When PurPics approached us, they’d just been accepted into the Techstars accelerator program. they knew they would be presenting their pitch to numerous peers, mentors, and potential investors over the next few weeks and needed to level up their visual style big time. They had several existing decks with strong content, but the design was inconsistent and didn’t accurately reflect their brand personality.

The biggest challenge? PurPics needed a look that would appeal to both sides of their market… the college students AND the brands. PurPics had to be current and youthful, but also polished and professional.

We started by reviewing the existing brand materials and developing a clearly defined personality & value system. Then we explored ways to evolve their existing color palette, which centered on an in-your-face hot pink that was a potential turn off to corporate clients.

Since presentation templates were the most urgent, we dove into those first, building a design system that could be applied to other branded assets in the future, like their website, ads, and product platform. The palette is bold and youthful, and the color blocking layout is super flexible. The brand’s focus on authenticity is communicated through the use of user-generated images.

To close out the project, we packaged everything up into an extensive Brand Guidelines package so the new visual style could be applied easily to any marketing materials. These guys are ready to present to Techstars—and any other exciting ventures that might come up in the future!