Company
Paladin, PBC
My Role
Brand Strategy
Workshop Facilitation
Visual Design Exploration
Design System
Learning from my experience at Justworks, upon joining Paladin I worked with it’s co-founders to first establish brand values, creating buy-in with the team, then used those to create a new visual identity. This exercise was as much about educating my team how to think about visual identity and the way to make visual identity decisions, as it was about the actual options.
First, educate.
As any agency veteran will tell you, a huge part of a successful identity project is to get everyone on the same page. My first step was to work with the team to understand what it was we were working toward, and how it fit within the greater world of our brand.
Where my D&D nerds at?
I love creative ways to get new insights out of folks. I took our existing brand values and interpreted them into more actionable values for a visual design language. Next, I gave each member of the team a *“min/maxing”* card to describe how they aspire to see those values in our identity. The results of this allowed me to move in a variety of directions.
Up the double diamond...
I was able to take those values and translate them into three distinct concepts in style tiles. Of course, none of these are supposed to be final, but to be far apart from each other in order to ellicit strong feelings.
...and back down
Given the feedback from the previous round, I moved forward with a more aspirational design and a more buttoned up one - very much two sides of law culture. Given the nature of Paladin, we of course went with the aspirational design.
An aspirational visual identity to match a lofty vision
Our goal at Paladin is to enable more and better pro bono - putting access to justice into the hands of those who need it most. The visual identity we established puts the aspirational nature of that mission front and center, inspiring lawyers to do their best work for people in need.