• Brand strategy
• Brand name
• Brand architecture
• Visual identity system
• Character creation
• Illustration style
• Voice
• Tagline
• Messaging
• Copywriting
• Brand launch kit
• Website
David Powell,
Director
We created a radiant master brand to position new global education company The Golden Thread in a competitive e-learning and self-development market, plus a website where they can sell their online courses to subscribers.
When the founders came to us, their initial need was to develop a brand and website for their first online personal development course, Life Journey Skills. As part of our brand advisory role, we challenged the founders to pivot. Rather than creating a single course brand, we recommended creating an inspirational master brand that would form a digital destination for an expanding portfolio of online life skills courses.
We proposed the name The Golden Thread as the master brand and brand name for the company and its online learning platform. Life Journey Skills would become the first self-development course available. This extensible brand architecture builds in headroom for the future, easily accommodating more courses over time. It’s perfect for a prolific founder who is excited at the opportunities to help people and teams thrive using digital learning.
The naming process was intuitive, with the name suggesting itself very quickly as we immersed ourselves in the self-help and self-improvement space. As a mythic device, the golden thread evokes the brand’s higher purpose to help people lead happier and more fulfilled lives, symbolising our connection to a higher self or source. To move forward with intention and confidence, each of us must boldly grasp our personal thread and follow where it leads.
Attuned to these insights and the brand story we pitched, the founders wholeheartedly agreed to pivot. The Golden Thread was born, with a budget assigned to buy the .com.
We developed an overarching tagline ‘Find your way’ that worked for the company’s two main audiences: people looking for self-development (seekers) and companies looking to invest in self-led professional development to improve leader and team performance. We developed a logical brand architecture for the master brand and the sub-brands (online courses, books and any other future media), plus high-level messaging to position the company and its e-learning platform.
As part of our work on the brand strategy, we also provided personal brand guidance and tools to help company founder and life skills mentor David Powell position himself on the website and on social media.
The brandmark we designed for The Golden Thread takes its cue from the name itself and the idea of finding a life you love, symbolised by the arrow/heart component of the mark. We used the primary brand colour gold to evoke optimism and light and the idea of higher purpose which is at the heart of the brand experience.
The visual identity needed to reflect the founder’s values of being uptone, conscious, and enlightened, while grounding the brand in warmth and optimism. We wanted the brand design to inspire confidence in moving forward in life, so we used a vibrant colour palette and simple, hand-drawn shapes. Through everything runs the golden thread itself, a dynamic graphic device that symbolises staying true to your higher purpose and aspirations for your life while showing the way forward.
‘Terrain’ patterns reflect the theme of navigating challenging life journeys. Hearts represent the deeply desired destination: a life you love. Visionary graphics reminiscent of iconic travel posters hint at the excitement and pleasures of the journey itself. Together they paint a positive future – one that people, leaders, and teams can reach using the company’s online courses and media.
All these elements come alive on the website, social media, and in the courses themselves. The golden thread device can be used to create beautifully fluid branded illustrations that can be used statically or animated in delightful ways to light up any brand collateral.
We consulted in depth to help the founders achieve their vision for powerfully engaging e-learning materials. We advised on script, voice, and visual style and produced a comprehensive brand kit to guide the video production team and other experts working on the brand. We also developed cute custom characters to illustrate fundamental concepts, making the course material more engaging and memorable. Learn more about our work on character creation, content development, and art direction for the online courses here.
To sell online courses to subscribers, the company needed a website. We built it from scratch on Squarespace, creating a robust information architecture and stress-testing the business logic before going live (we ask a lot of questions). We did all copywriting, graphics, and web development, including a ‘quick and dirty’ basic content strategy so article pages would be fully populated at go-live. In a subsequent scope of work, we also helped build the digital learning platform to host subscriber-only course materials. Learn more here.
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