Design and Brand Identity
Meet Blaire
Blaire is in her 30’s, works from home, loves her pets (most of the time), enjoys good food, looking and feeling her best, and keeping up with the latest news and fashion.
More than all of this though, Blaire cares about the impact her decisions have on the world around her.
Like many of her friends, Blaire is concerned about the increasingly dire predictions that seem to come out on a daily basis surrounding the state of the environment, the increasing collapse of biodiversity, and spiralling inequality.
She believes in the revolutionary power of dollar-voting, intentional buying, and dreams of one day finally discovering an online shopping experience that empower both individual consumers as well as companies who are working to change the world for the better.
Blaire’s friends and family frequently go to her as a reliable source of knowledge and recommendations for the latest ethically considered products as they know she’s always on-point when it comes to those that are hot, and (when it comes to avoiding those that do more harm), savvy about those that are not.
In her circle, Blaire is influential, reliable, friendly, and approachable. She’s not afraid to speak her mind and her closest friends trust her non-judgemental and no B.S approach to sharing her knowledge and helping them navigate the web of misinformation and greenwashing to get to the truth of discovering brands that actually care and products that are actually better.
Blaire has a voice, a style, and a core set of values that define who she is, how she communicates, and what matters most to her.
Live By isn’t a person, but if it were, it would look and sound a lot like Blaire.
This is a fundamentally intentional part of our brand ethos and what we believe makes us, well, us.
It encapsulates everything we believe, manifested in the form of the brand, our values, our aesthetic and our voice.
Our logo keeps things simple .
We’re super-proud of our logo and we’re always intentional about how and where we use it to communicate our brand and what we stand for.
Our logo is a combination of a simple and understated, modern wordmark which underlines our core values and a belief in the ability for us all to address the problems that count with a data-driven solution for producing impactful results.
If you’re looking to use our logo, icon, or marks in any of their forms, follow these guidelines to ensure they alway looks its best.
Using our icon
Our icon is a shorter version of our logo. Use the icon on its own only if you do not have enough room for the full logo or in cases when the Live By brand has already been established. While the icon can exist without the wordmark, the wordmark should never exist without the icon.
ZIP FILE TO LOGO AND ICONS HERE
Our colours paint the big picture .
The color palette we use helps us tell a story while staying true to a foundation of essential truths on which our brand is built.
At their core, our colors are based in a belief that the values and causes we care about can be reduced down to black and white decisions that we help our community make through an engaged, informed, and data-driven approach to enacting change – this is reflected in our use of a base set of functional colors with which we communicate visually.
Brand / Pioneer Color
MAIN PIONEER COLOR HERE
Functional Colors
FUNCTIONAL COLOR PALETTE HERE
Feedback Colors
FEEDBACK COLOR PALETTE HERE
Accent Colors
ACCENT COLOR PALETTE HERE
Our typography makes things clearer .
We use font choices that strike a balance between serious and playful, allowing us to reflect our underlying brand values and those of our team, while still allowing us to communicate our core message on the issues, causes and themes that matter most.
This is Minion Pro. Our brand typeface.
Minion Pro is the primary brand typeface for Live By. An accessible and reliable serif font, combining a warmth and authority that projects optimism, trustworthiness and sincerity.
Inter is our supporting font .
Inter is the supporting brand typeface for Live By. This modern sans-serif promotes legibility and readability, while striking a balance with the style and openness of Minion Pro
Typeface
Minion Pro
Inter
Weights
We use “Regular” and “Bold“.
Type Scale
We adhere to a strict and consistent type scale across our written content and elements of our platform. This maximizes the legibility of our written communication and helps ensure that there is a continual and familiar pattern across all areas of our brand.
Our voice and tone informs and advises.
Tone
So how are voice and tone different?This is how we think about it: We (and Blaire) have the same voice all the time, but our tone can change depending on the situation or context.Sometimes we may use one tone when we’re out grabbing a coffee with out closest friends, while we’d use a completely different one when we’re in a professional setting like an interview or having a meeting at work.Our tone can also change based on the person we’re talking to and their current emotional state – for example we would never use the same tone speaking to someone who’s worried, upset or feeling powerless as we would with someone who we’re joking with or who’s sharing good news with us.At Live By this is how we write, speak, and engage with our community – our voice rarely changes, but our tone does (and should) change frequently, depending on the context, subject, and situation.Voice
At Live By, we’re keenly aware that we ‘re all in this together and that we face the same existential challenges as our community. We know that buying sustainable, fair, and ethical products is often characterized by confusing terminology, intentional obfuscation, misdirection and misinformation. That’s why we speak like the experienced and compassionate friend that you feel comfortable going to for advice, who respects your decisions, and never judges you.We treat every member of our community, visitors, brands, and partners seriously and with respect. We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them and because of this we always aim to be honest and forthright when we communicate.We speak directly to our audience in a casual, engaging, non-judgemental, and earnest way. We talk about serious issues with authority and conviction but we keep things approachable and friendly at all times. We are always looking for ways to pleasantly surprise our audience. Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we are provocateurs who enjoy pushing boundaries but never overstepping them. Whether people know what they need from us or don’t know the first thing about buying better, every word we say aims to inform and encourage. We impart our expertise and those of our partners with clarity, empathy, and wit.All of this means that when we write copy we stick to the following guiding principles regarding our brand voice:We are optimistic.
No matter how bad things seem outside, at Live By we always remain optimistic and convinced of the power of collective action to create a better world for everyone. Our community is a safe space in which we encourage and empower each other to make impactful changes for the better, now matter how small.We never use words or phrases that evoke fear, obligation or guilt:Yes: We all face big challenges, but together, we can make a differenceNo: The world is on fire, nothing can be done Yes: Every decision that you make matters, no matter how smallNo: You’re not doing enough Yes: Eating less meat will reduce your carbon footprintNo: Eating meat is wrongWe are plain-spoken.
We understand the realities of the world our customers are living in: one increasingly muddled by hyperbolic language, greenwashing, and shady business practices. We cut through the noise, provide transparency and agency for our community, and value clarity above all. We avoid distractions like fluffy metaphors, disingenuous soundbites and cheap plays to emotion.We are genuine.
We care deeply about causes and issues and are aware of the existential importance of mitigating climate change, biodiversity loss and the effects of global inequality. This means that we relate to customers’ challenges and concerns and speak to them in a familiar, friendly, and accessible way.Our images bring focus and clarity to things that matter
If a picture paints a thousand words, then we believe that choosing the right images is crucial to communicating the right message.
At Live By we always choose and use images that are simple yet powerful when it comes to speaking without words to get across what needs to be said.
Whether it’s a product photo representing a brand’s offering or a lifestyle image being used on a page or as a piece of supporting content, we always preference images that are simple rather than complex, evocative rather than provocative, and inspiring rather than mundane.
Our use of images and photography is a central pillar of our visual identity and is therefore intentionally considered at all times.
Our data visualization simplifies the complex
Data sits at the heart of everything we do allowing us to communicate complex and dynamic concepts and values in a way which is clear, concise, accurate, and above all – useful.
We help our community make better informed decisions that do less harm through the use of data which is relevant, up to date, and impactful.
The right data delivered in the right way is powerful (and empowering), actionable, and when presented effectively, tells a story in a way which few other mediums can.
With this in mind, the way we present the data we interrogate is critical to ensuring we present information in a way which is both accessible and meaningful.
Charts
We use charts across the Live By platform to present complex, multi-faceted issues in a way which is legible, clean and highly-accessible for our community to interrogate and interpret in a number of practical ways.
The role of charts at the user interface level on Live By is largely twofold.
1. We use front-facing charts to allow for an at-a-glance overview of key information which is often complex and dynamic in a simple, friendly, and accessible format. This presentation may relate to information across a range of areas from causes, values, and issues to that relating to brands and products based upon the EAS metrics we capture and collate.
2. We also implement charts and similar visual data mediums as a way of providing an entry-point for diving deeper and interrogating information at the more granular level – for example, comparing brands and products based upon user exploring specific issues or to allow filtering of information at multiple levels.
In all cases, the charts we use adhere to a specific and non-changing set of aesthetic rules and style guidelines to ensure consistency and to maximize legibility at all times.
Product Grading Charts
Data visualization at the product-level always takes the same form on the Live By platform and is represented in a series of three radial bar-charts within a product’s listing page, each representing a high-level EAS score or ‘grade’ for the product, broken down across our three Core Values respectively – Planet, Animals, People.
The radial grading bar-charts on each product page are always color-coded within our brand’s Core Value color style guidelines according to the Core Value they represent:
Planet: #91E2E8
Animals: #0A5252
People: #11BB9F
Brand Grading Charts
Data visualization at the brand level takes several forms, however at the high level, both the Core Value EAS ‘grading’ and the radial bar-chart motif are maintained from the Product Grading Charts, both for continuity and to ensure legibility across scales when it comes to understanding the overall impact or ‘big picture’ of a brand and the constituent products that make it up.
For these charts at the brand level, the radial bar-chart visualization combines all three of the Core Values for the aggregate EAS of both the brand itself and it’s products into a single visual reflecting the combined high-level score of the entire brand.
This is represented by a streamlined, yet familiar and accessible visualization combining all of the data of the brand and its product line.
Styling for Brand Grading Charts adheres to the same rules as Product Grading Charts and the chart elements must always maintain the same visual order of appearance wherever they are displayed in chart form (Planet, Animals, People):
Planet: #91E2E8
Animals: #0A5252
People: #11BB9F
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