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Rebranding Piper, Inc. for the EDU Audience

 

Role:
Senior Visual Designer

Responsibilities:
Branding, Art Direction, Visual Design

Year:
2017 - Present

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Overview

In the summer of 2017 I was brought on as Piper’s first full-time Senior Visual Designer. When I started, I inherited a conglomeration of artifacts, designs, and files from Piper's previous contract designers. This is where I then assessed Piper's current brand; the things that stuck, didn't work, and its potential.

 

Minimizing The
Minecraft Footprint

"One aspect of Piper, Inc.'s "brand" and product is how they utilize Minecraft (A very popular computer game that allows you to create—think–digital LEGOS)"

Understanding Who We Are:
Our company's mission is inspired by the rapid and advancing technological world that we live in. Kid’s are growing up consuming a lot of different products, passively—via blackbox phones, shiny packages, flashiness of content—without actually knowing how they really work. Piper’s mission is to provide equitable access to STEAM education by demystifying technology for students, teachers, and families.

But because of our recent shift from a "Toy" company to an "EDU" company, Minecraft proposed these problems below that needed to be addressed.

The Many Problems

"After Piper, Inc.'s pivot towards an EDU market (B2B), the reliance and prominence of Minecraft (B2C) no longer was necessary."

Minecraft has helped us differentiate ourselves and has given us a staying power with kids, but when we’re thinking long-term, these are the following problems that have come up:

1) Legality/Marketing issues - How far can we use Minecraft for leverage?

2) Business Transition - Toy Consumer to EDU Market (Minecraft is very "consumery")

3) Our research and feedback has shown that Educator’s don’t pay attention to Minecraft - it’s a secondary/tertiary component, not the primary one when they purchase.

4) Software scalability - Will we use Minecraft in the next few years (what are the current problems that the software development team faces?) or develop our own IP?

5) Minecraft shouldn’t be the main deciding factor of the product when customers buy—but instead—it should be an accessible DIY STEAM product experience that attracts our buyers.

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The Demographics

"Piper, Inc. wants to be a starting point for "everyone" to empower them to understand, connect, and create technology."

PARENTS / KIDS / STUDENTS / EDUCATORS:

1) Parents who purchase in store(when we were in retailers)

2) Parents who purchase online via website/online retailers

3) Moms have been most likely purchase as much as Dads for their children.

4) Ages 35-55 - primarily, Parents who have children/grandchildren ages 8-13

5) Middle class to upper middle class families (hopefully when pricing changes, this would be more accessible to more lower income families.)

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6) Because of the complexity/learning curve of our product, our sweet spot is students ages 8-13, Primarily 3rd-8th graders.

7) Educators who are first-time STEAM Users, or STEAM pioneers.

Even though our company shifted to becoming EDU focused, we stil need to understand and keep our consumer market because the previous 4 years were based off of it.

We’ve had customers who have bought for their kids as low as 3 yrs old and to adults as high as 100 yrs old.

The perspective–as most of competitors aspire to with their products–is that they’re “technically” meant for everyone. The persistent and inviting belief, that anyone can make anything when you're given the tools/knowledge.

The Groundwork

The Process:
I had meetings with the founders, the team, past employees and what our users (Educators, Parents, Kids) were saying about our product. Because of the complexity of our product, everyone had their own perspective and understanding—this didn't make it any easier. 😅

Conflicts and Challenges:
There were many differences in our direction early on as a company before we could solidify messaging and any guidelines. It was half the company who was for keeping Minecraft as a key selling point and motif, and while the other half who didn't believe it was necessary based off of user feedback.

What I needed, to be able to make effective work (it helps A LOT) was a clear Mission, Vision, Core Values—and subsequently—a Product Roadmap.

Analyzing:
What are the core things of our product? And what are things that would scale? Should the Minecraft: Pi Edition characters be our mascots, what colors are necessary. What market are we targeting?...Etc.

Eventually I was able to narrow down that Piper is all about Fluency.

This was a stepping stone and one that was very beneficial for the company and for myself to be able to produce a working brand guideline.

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Developing Brand Guidelines

After some time, the Director of Marketing and I finally got a working Brand Guideline put together! 🎉 Minecraft is less prominent but we believe it still carries over with the essence of creativity, simplicitiy, pixels, nostalgia/software, and the maker mindset mentality. Visually, there's also a sophistication and edginess that makes us stand out from our competitors, too.

Here's a preview of the Brand Guidelines below:

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Developing Stylescapes

The Brand Guidelines gave me a good starting point to discover and explore. I created stylescapes to reference off of to create new visual assets and inpsiration. Below are mockups done from the stylescapes.

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Afterthoughts

"It'll be challenging as we continue to expand our product line, but I'm satisfied that we now have something to work from. ✊

With this foundation in place we can use the brand guidelines as a reference point to decipher our data and make informed decisions on visual design. Gladly, these things have started to move toward that direction. Now that we're an EDU company, this opens us up to not only grade levels 3-8, but all grade levels from K-12.