Evolving healthcare with science, empathy, and connected brand design
The Challenge
Twill, formerly known as Happify Health, was coming to the end of a five-year transition from a mental health provider to a full spectrum platform. Their goal was a big one–untangling the complexities of a fragmented healthcare system by providing solutions uniquely equipped to address all sides of health, aided by both human and AI resources. The shift required an internal and external reimagining of the organization.
The result was a brand-led transformation that communicated the core value of Twill at all levels–from strategy to design and experience. A new brand architecture that intuitively brought together their disconnected offerings was the first step in empowering Twill’s reinvention of their category.
We then brought it to life with a brand identity that expressed the unification of their multiple brands and products and communicated their growth to a clinical, evidence-based solution designed to care for whole people, not just specific conditions. A precise, personalized, and fully connected care experience.
The Solution
We partnered with their team from conception to launch, starting with a singular brand strategy that informed the activations and generative tools that brought the brand to life. These tools, like a custom “thread generator,” help Twill easily and consistently communicate their value to a bigger audience and help more people along their journey to better health. All of the brand assets live in an open-ended, usable playbook designed to make creating additional branded assets as easy a lift as possible.
The Outputs
We collectively and collaboratively developed these tools and brand assets that, when combined, set Twill up to greet the world fully realized and ready to articulate their unique value.
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1. Brand Architecture
Strategy and verbal teams collaborated on unifying the Twill portfolio and outlining a new path to market, aligning with the brand’s vision of truly comprehensive care.
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2. Naming Strategy and Naming
Systematized, user-centric strategy created an opportunity to express Twill's mission. The name acts as a metaphor for the universally practical fabric twill. The essence of the fabric is brought to life by combining digital health services that create a practical, empathetic network of care.
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3. Behaviors and Brand Principles
Behaviors and imperatives embedded in the Twill name are embodied by a consistent strategic through line of untangling, weaving, and guiding that gives direction to verbal, visual, and experiential design as well as overall strategy.
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4. Persona
The Twill persona was workshopped through the lens of behaviors to determine how the brand would behave—visually, verbally, and experientially.
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5. Active Brand Playbook
A comprehensive brand identity playbook divided into Book (learn) and Play (extend), the playbook is both usable and extensible, inclusive of brand identity, color architecture, messaging architecture, and a verbal toolkit.
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6. UI Systems Design
Translating the brand system into notional interface elements across digital therapeutic experiences and sign-up modules.
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7. Brand Launch Assets
Bringing Twill’s identity to life with an animated :60s Brand Video, :30s cutdown, :30s product video, a series of Digital Campaign Banner Templates, designed internal sales materials, a collection of corporate Swag, and a wide range of motion assets.
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8. Website Design and Development
Recreating an existing website using our new design system and motion graphics, impacting UI, content strategy, and site experience.
The Process
To meet the new strategic north star the company set, we started with a brand architecture to unify individually contained solutions under a connected portfolio. The goal was to simplify the end-to-end user experience and build brand recognition through a cohesive set of offerings.
The company then needed a new name that broke tech and healthcare conventions while being both descriptive and evocative enough to remain understandable and ownable over time. Our team generated over 2,000 notional names, before narrowing it down to a shortlist of five unique, trademarkable options. In each of our shortlisted names, we explored a visual design idea that could activate a whole brand identity. The activation of this new brand fueled every step of our process and is why the elements of Twill are as interwoven as the solutions they offer.
Conception
Centered around their chosen name, we built the brand identity beginning with a logo that evokes balance between the science and humanity of Twill's human-guided, clinically-designed tools. Our intersectional approach resulted in an Active Brand with dynamic behaviors and design– all crafted to help Twill make healthcare more accessible.
Design
Brand behaviors
We also helped the client evolve their existing color palette, creating a framework to define specific uses for color that made it a systematic tool within the brand and products that helps navigate across diagnoses.
Color system
We equipped Twill with a comprehensive brand identity playbook containing verbal, visual, and behavioral guidelines, along with a brand asset library and practical tips for writing and communications.
Activation
Brand playbook
It was crucial Twill felt empowered and confident in managing the growth of their brand over time. That’s why the playbook is a living object with both editable and click-and-draggable assets, housed in a collaborative and extensible workspace to guide successful future applications of the brand and the behaviors that make strategy tangible. It is not a strictly codified set of slides that very well could wind up collecting digital dust on a desktop.
Twill thread generator
Building off the playbook, we created a generative tool for designers to perpetually create bespoke thread creations. Used to ease design work, not bypass it, the Figma plugin acts as a starting point for designers to refine and apply to new assets.
Brand launch video
Beyond the playbook, we also produced a collection of activation touchpoints to help Twill launch its new brand. External touchpoints included animated videos that brought the thread to life (created with our video production partner Made By Radio), a range of motion graphics that help tell the thread’s story, and a new website that exemplified our brand identity. Internal touchpoints included a collection of swag that brought the brand into useful objects that people actually want to use, as well as a collection of sales materials to help ensure Twill’s story always stays in focus.
Notional brand touchpoints
The goal was to create a site that exemplified Twill’s connected, patient-oriented ethos. Our strategic approach included easy to navigate UX, understandable language, and a friendly visual presence all work to make Twill’s online home reflect their full personality. Check it out at twill.health.
Website redesign and build
“What makes Proto different is their ability to quickly grasp the complexities of a business, ask the provocative questions that challenge underlying assumptions and collide commercial rigor with massive creative imagination. Partnership has become an almost bankrupt word, but Proto were truly the best partner you could ask for - similar enough to get along, but different enough to be dangerous. They've helped bring deep simplicity to our business and helped shape a brand that is distinctively relevant.”
- Gareth Kay, CMO, Twill