Learn To Be
Learn To Be provides free, 1-on-1 online tutoring to kids from under-resourced communities across the U.S.
SCOPE
Branding Strategy
Messaging Workshop
Verbal Identity
Visual Identity
Copywriting
Brand Guide
PROJECT
Brand Identity
YEAR
2021
At the outset of the COVID-19, Learn To Be’s online tutoring services rapidly gained traction as families across the country struggled to keep up with their kids’ needs. Over the course of a year, Mammmal helped the team at Learn To Be to develop a comprehensive brand identity that could accommodate the scale and growth of the business, so they could focus less on design and messaging and more on changing kids’ lives for the better.
We learned in our market research that the dominant visual language of the education sector could be defined as subtle, serious, and impersonal. This revealed our fundamental design challenge: to unify Learn To Be’s diverse key audiences (parents, school administrators, and tutors), within an identity that would still appeal to the end users — kids!
To accomplish this, we oriented Learn To Be’s identity around a central concept that anyone can understand, regardless of age, sex, or circumstance: the feeling of being immersed in and momentarily transported by a beloved storybook. The resulting visual identity brims with playful motifs inspired by exploration and learning, all brought to life through a whimsical cut-out aesthetic.
Our logo icon picks up the geometric, childlike language of the brand concept and communicates a story of becoming through the evolution of two semicircles into a sphere. The friendly custom word mark brings a touch of academia while still maintaining a playful spirit.
A requirement for the brand palette was to curate existing color values from TailWind, a CSS framework used by Learn To Be on their website.
Using TailWind’s library, we crafted a dynamic palette that can assume dramatically different attitudes depending on the color combination used for a given design.
This gives Learn To Be the flexibility to create a range of graphics appropriate for their many audiences, from young students to college-age tutors and even school administrators and parents.
Verbal Identity
Mammmal facilitated a team-wide messaging workshop for Learn To Be, leading exercises that unpacked the organization’s ethos, convictions, and sphere of influence. We then drafted mission, vision, purpose, values, tagline, value proposition, key benefits, marketing copy, and boilerplate of varying lengths.
To help Learn To Be’s team better connect with its key audiences, we identified a tonal matrix for all of their primary segments and created guidelines for how to communicate with each in the brand’s voice.
Finally, we iterated on all of our messaging for cultural and social sensitivity, taking care to build a verbal identity that makes all kids feel welcome.
