Human After All rebrands a social media agency with the aim of creating clarity from chaos

In order to create a “real statement of intent”, James Woods, senior designer from Human After All, claims that it was important to help the social media agency Born Social embrace a mature attitude without losing “their friendly, approachable vibe.” Human After All aimed to do this by stripping back elements of social media to a bare bones identity, with emojis floating around against plain, muted backgrounds and clean typography.

Copy director Jess Bashford says that helping the team find a new idea to pin their colours to, “now that they’d outgrown ‘Think like David, not Goliath’”, was the most important part of the strategy. When exploring elements of social media to inspire the design, the team kept coming back to the idea of ‘harnessing the chaos,’ which, Bashford claims, now acts as a unifying idea for the brand.

The use of ‘online’ elements such as the emojis and expression faces created from symbols were important because, visually, the team wanted to highlight the energy of ‘online’ while maintaining a sophisticated design system “that helps communicate their position as confident thought-leaders,” says Bashford. “Textural type illustrates the many voices of digital conversations and helps amplify text heavy, opinion-led communication.”

Because the brand values energy and dynamism, the team wanted to express movement and interactivity alongside creating something practical. Now, the website feels “uniquely theirs,” says senior designer Laura Smith.

Speaking of the colour palette, the London-based design agency says: “Blue is an important colour for Born Social. It’s something with equity which has helped them stand out against competition,” Woods reflects. More broadly, “it’s something that hints at the wider world of social and technology,” he argues. So that Born Social’s visual identity was optimistic, Human After All made sure to create a palette that is able to “react to a variety of information.”