Define the Perin core brand identity, and ensure that it can be scaled and communicated at every touch-point of the business.
A secondary goal was to also build up the team’s ownership and excitement to work on this mission-driven product.
Goals:
In the healthtech industry, Perin–an engineer-led company, pioneers remote monitoring technology with an emphasis on accessibility, equity, and innovation. But, lacking a cohesive brand, efforts to bring it to market became shaky.
That’s where I came in: Hired to provide creative consulting, I found a common startup dilemma: A stellar product without a defined purpose. Before tackling visuals, I prescribed that Perin solidify their core identity—defining their purpose, vision, mission, values, target market, and positioning.
Then, I would help them define their visual identity, and assist them with integrating it into their existing product with the beginnings of an atomic design system.
At this stage, you may be asking: Why a workshop instead of a different approach?
The answer is kind of cliche, but overwhelmingly true: Teamwork makes the dream work.
Before diving in, I got to know the team through virtual 1-on-1s. Turns out that over half were new employees—many joining Perin within a month. This meant Perin’s core identity wasn’t the only goal—I had to make sure the team owned it, too.
The workshop was completed in 2 days, with 10 participants:
Day 1 focused on the “Why” and “How” of Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle—defining Perin’s Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values.
Day 2 tackled the “What”—crafting brand personality, understanding target customer Jobs-to-be-Done, and strategic messaging.*
*Only some workshop results are shown below in order to respect & maintain client confidentiality.
Inspired by Perin’s brand personality traits that the team had defined in the workshop, I created a mood board.
Drawing from community murals with a woodblocking style, Perin’s visual elements are grounded in simplicity and texture. Using stable geometric shapes and compositions conveys leadership and trust. To demonstrate innovation and relevancy, imagery is treated using transparency and soft texture for depth.
Once a visual identity has been nailed down, the next [often tricky] step is creating design tokens for their design system, alongside brand guidelines, streamlining brand alignment across their digital products.
The key is starting small and simple. For Perin, I centralized color design tokens, typography scale, and tone of voice guideline documentation in Figma for easy team access and usage.
Perin exemplifies the more unexpected value of creative guidance.
The team not only learned to distinguish visual identity from brand, but also built camaraderie in a safe, open environment through the brand identity workshop. However the most significant benefit they reported was the newfound feeling of excitement and sense of ownership derived from clarifying the purpose of their products.
Work on Perin’s product and marketing is ongoing, and I remain engaged as a consultant in their vital endeavors.
