MindUP — Vince Baarson - Brand Identity & UX Designer in Phoenix

Web UI & Identity Design | Agency: AKOS Web

MindUP - The Goldie Hawn Foundation

An updated brand and website for an organization prioritizing mental health for kids

An organization helping kids develop their mental fitness and social emotional skills, MindUP works with existing schools to interact with as many kids as possible. Looking for a total overhaul of the brand, including their website, they wanted something that was energetic and fun, that would appeal to education stakeholders, boards and parents. The website needed to be able to show what the foundation represented, what they do and provide teachers and parents with access to instructional materials.

The Brand Identity

Based on the character of the brand, the clients and indirect audience the identity needed to feel welcoming, scientific, a bit academic and like something that would also appeal to kids. The logo and extended the brand styles include an ultra bright color palette, clean typography and modern color block illustrations. The prior version of the logo incorporated the smiley face for the U in UP, but overall the wordmark needed to round out and be refined to balance that hardness of science and softness of welcoming emotional work.

Illustration & Iconography

The inspiration for the iconography comes from the Modern style. It’s clean and digital with color underlay that help visually enhance the message each icon is representing. The process for creating this full set started with sketching and a comprehensive visual search regarding the relationship of shape, keeping in mind these icons needed to visually communicate in cultures across the world the iconography was geared in a more realistic representation, not in terms of style, but in terms of visual recognition.

Website

The website was going to be content heavy in nature, it would be housing the front-facing marketing message, but also series of reports and learning materials. In order to keep the eye on the content, the plan was to keep the design clean and bold and infuse personality around it, including unexpected UI animations that contributed to a light-hearted feel with such brain-heavy information. Mobile was a big focus for this website because there were some more highly functional components like the impact map, these were reimagined for smaller screens to be more focused on the statistics, keeping the visual map reserved for the desktop experience.