Project 04 — 2024
Atlas — Brand and product design language for a health startup
One identity system stretched honestly across brand, app, and clinic-facing tools.
- Role
- Designer — brand & product
- Timeline
- 5 months
- Team
- 1 brand designer, 2 engineers, me
- Scope
- BrandingDesign systemVisual exploration
Context
A health startup pivoted from B2C wellness to clinical care, and its playful consumer brand suddenly worked against it: patients needed reassurance, clinics needed credibility. The company needed one identity that could behave differently in each world without splitting in two.
I worked between brand and product to define that identity system and carry it into the app.
The problem
The existing brand was loud and rounded — right for a fitness app, wrong for a product that handles medical records. But over-correcting into sterile “clinical blue” would lose the warmth that made patients comfortable sharing personal data.
Meanwhile, the product UI had drifted from the brand entirely: two teams, two palettes, two type scales.
Framing
We framed the brand as a voice with a volume knob: one identity, with parameters — color temperature, illustration density, type weight — that shift by context. Marketing gets the warm setting; the medical record screen gets the calm one.
This kept the rebrand from becoming a compromise nobody liked, and gave product a clear rule for when to dial what.
Key decisions
Decision 01
A two-temperature palette
Warm neutrals and a signature coral carry the brand; a calm clinical layer — deeper greens and blues — takes over in care contexts. Shared tokens guarantee the two never clash, only shift.
Decision 02
Illustration that knows when to leave
Illustration density is parameterized: rich and human in onboarding and marketing, minimal to absent in records and results. Patients never encounter decoration next to diagnosis.
Decision 03
One type ramp for both worlds
A single modular scale serves billboard and body text. Brand and product finally sized type from the same source, ending the drift that started the project.
The solution
An identity with a volume knob
The system shipped as brand guidelines plus a tokenized theme in code. The same weekend the rebrand launched, the product's calm theme shipped — because both read from the same tokens.
Outcome
products unified under one system
hardcoded hex values left in the app
brand trust score, pre/post patient survey
Reflection
Brand and product are usually separate jobs — but patients experience one continuous thing. Working across that boundary taught me to design parameters, not artifacts.
It also made me fluent in tokens: this project is where I learned that consistency is a data model before it's a visual style.
More curated work
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03 · 2025 · User research
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Interested in working together?
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Contact
If this way of thinking fits your product, let's talk.
I'm open to full-time roles and collaborations — bring me a problem worth solving.