As Arbisoft committed to becoming a leader in the Pakistani startup community, I created Juniper, Arbisoft's incubator to discover the next big idea. Prior to launching publicly, my team and I decided to define an identity and a set of values that would distinguish us from our competitors. After a two-week brand exercise, we were able to determine what we wanted to be, how we wanted to be perceived, and how we could best communicate our mission, vision, and values to the right audience. This exercise culminated in Juniper's brand book, an artifact we could share with the world to explain what we were trying to accomplish.
Finding and communicating a brand’s identity
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Project Objective
Conception
What makes a tree a good incubator?
We chose a tree as our brand symbol because it supported our values of:
- Being supportive: trees are known for providing nourishment, habitats, and shade to ecosystems.
- Being innovative: trees find ways to grow everywhere. If something gets in their path, they just grow around it. They find a way to just 'be', no matter how odd it might look.
- Creating impact: trees are among the oldest living things on earth. Trees play an important role in every culture and religion.
Started from the bottom
Simply introducing our idea wouldn't have been enough to make people evangelists. Rather, we wanted to take them through our entire journey and show what we learned and how we got here.
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Why Juniper?
The culmination of our journey led to us launching our own incubator named Juniper. Just like the Juniper tree, we wanted to be resilient, adaptable & evergreen.
The gist of it all
It takes a community to build a successful product. What we wanted to create was an incubator that did not only provide monetary funding or resources but a community, where people could learn from and help one another.
Creating a meaningful brand
The importance of community
The nature of trees is to collaborate with those around them to co-create an environment that is beneficial for all its creatures. This can be boiled down to the understanding that by helping others, we are essentially helping ourselves and thus, creating community.
Finding the right fit
A series of thought exercises helped us choose our color palette: purple symbolizes juniper berries (the uniqueness and individuality of products coming into the incubator) and green symbolizes the natural setting of a juniper tree (a shelter and foundation provided for products to grow).
Way of Life
I conducted a series of brand workshop exercises with the core team to identify our brand vision and values, which included: 20 Year Plan, Start with Why, Our Audience, Group Values and Brand Personality. Based on the data collected, we formulated our values and vision.
Our Promise
Additionally, we developed a brand statement to help the team embody Juniper's values and work in a way that complements Juniper's brand.
Personifying Juniper
We created Juniper's personality and feelings after thinking about questions like 'what can someone do after being a part of Juniper' and 'what can someone feel after being a part of Juniper'. That led to deciding on a visual mood and discussing associations and abstractions.
Ending strong
Our Mission
Lastly, we defined how we would achieve our vision, which meant going back to where we started: our primary goal and the steps we would take to achieve it.
Reimagining the way we work
Juniper's brand personality is at the heart of how we work and interact with each other and with others outside our team. A digital version of this handbook was sent company-wide, and we plan to make it available to the public as well. Juniper has always been community-led, and this brand book has been an integral part of establishing that community and promoting Juniper.
Learnings
Structured thinking and brainstorming.
This experience taught me to think and brainstorm in a structured manner. I learned various methods for finding a brand's voice and tone, as well as the art of workshop facilitation. I mastered the skill of integrating everyone's thoughts and ideas into something tangible.
Strengthening Design Competence
Designing the brand book and developing the visual elements of the brand identity allowed me to sharpen my UI and graphic design skills. This hands-on experience was invaluable in enhancing my design proficiency.
Digital and physical materials made after the establishment of the brand.
