With Pulp
A New Technology Partner
Images from identity redesign pre-project exercise with With Pulp founder Husam Machlovi
The following is a peek into the processes of working with With Pulp, a digital product and design studio looking to restructure some of the identity, UX and visual design elements of their site.
Image from parallel social media campaign project depicting the types of questions With Pulp uses when trying to gain insights on their own client projects.
The work started with reviewing the brief alongside a series of interviews and conversations with the client to learn about who they’d been in the past as it compared to where they wanted to position themselves going forward.
Next, I conducted user research to better understand overlapping client and user needs.
This was followed by creating mood boards with images fonts and color palettes evocative of themes and emotions that came up.
Early conversations with the client revolved around how the accumulated concepts might translate into a character or series of characters that could be used in the site's main page hero image space and potentially throughout the site to help tell the story of the studio, its ambitions and philosophy, in a fun and creative way.
One concept that we developed that made use of the site tagline "A New Blend of Technology Partner" and gave it greater graphic depth was a pairing of a robot and caveman that might appear throughout the site to thematically show the benefits of technological modernization with an approachable warmth and humor.
Images taken from powerpoint deck used to present client with findings and concepts.
In an alternative take, I played with utilizing more directly some of the pop culture imagery we'd discussed to create interest and excitement around a sort of "mad science" that technological upgrading could provide.
During our colaborative process, the client decided on a different narrative positioning for the studio, and as the tagline for the studio changed from “A new technology partner’ to “The thoughtful digital studio” I endeavored to pivot to something that both retained the working parts and energies of previous iterations but also captured this newly emphasized idea of thoughtfulness while also highlighting the client’s diverse network of skilled makers.
Below is an excerpt from a prototype that applied this theme and modeled how similarly playful illustrated gifs could be utilized to push forward the With Pulp story.
mobile
desktop
Currently, this project is ongoing and evolving in a different direction once more as world events like pandemic and changes in the company have necessarily altered company strategies. Still, I have really enjoyed working with With Pulp and getting the chance to test new ideas and ways in which I could help bring this company's personality and achievements to the visual forefront.