Ola Yogi:
Brand Strategy and Branding Guide
This collaborative project consisted of the development of a new branding strategy and branding guide for Ola Yogi, a tool for virtual self-guided Yin yoga. The brand was facing a number of challenges: converting customers, reaching the proper audience, and increasing brand awareness.
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My responsibilities were to develop the brand positioning statement, brand story, brand personality, logo, color palette, typography, as well as to conduct a website audit and create website redesign suggestions. However, I was also involved in the development of the overall brand strategy that our team came up with for Ola Yogi.
After having a couple of meetings with our client and identifying who the target market for Ola Yogi really is, I began writing up brand positioning and brand story.
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Brand Positioning
"For the middle-aged working professionals in search of personalized Yin yoga practices, Ola Yogi is a tool for self-guided Yin yoga that could be practiced at your convenience. With detailed instructions complemented with video clips, Ola Yogi allows yogis to learn how to go in and out of the pose and how long to hold the pose ahead of time. The unique ability to choose their own audio and set their own timer allows yogis to take full control over their individualized practice. Unlike regular or online yoga classes, Ola Yogi provides an opportunity to be fully engaged and invested in your own practice without any distractions, allowing you to fully unwind and find your balance during hectic lifestyles on your own time, in your own way, with minimal screen time."
Brand Story
In an attempt to bring more ease and balance into our life through Yin yoga classes, there is a variety of factors that could prevent us from fully indulging in the experience whether it is that you do not know what pose comes next or you do not like the audio, or the time of the day is simply inconvenient for you. Ola Yogi came to be in 2019 when Dianne D’Elia found that Yin yoga helped her with unwinding after stressful days at work, however, she found that there are no resources that exclusively focused on teaching Yin sequences through which people can learn everything they need to know and do it themselves, in an environment that suits them, and at their own convenience.
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In order to allow the middle-aged working professionals to unwind and be fully engaged in their personal Yin experience, Ola Yogi was created to be a tool for a self-guided Yin yoga practice that could be done anywhere, at any time, with minimal screen time and minimal distractions. With passion and commitment to help yogis find balance, connection, and flexibility, Ola Yogi strives to become an international leader of self-guided Yin practice in the near future.
Brand Personality
In exploring the brand personality of Ola Yogi, my initial idea was to use “nurturing” because this brand is passionate about taking care of its audience; it is focused on educating and helping people to learn how to help themselves. This reminded me of the “caregiver” archetype. Caregiver brands are moved by compassion and desire to help others. They are also known as helpers, therefore, I identified Ola Yogi`s brand personality as nurturing and caring. Lastly, I chose the word "peaceful" to highlight the calming and relaxing qualities of the brand.
Design Work
My next step was creative design work. This started with highlighting words that are most closely associated with the nature of the brand. These words were: balance, connection, flexibility, healing, feminine, elegant, calm, relaxing, replenishing, and self-love.
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Colour Palette
To best reflect Ola Yogi as a brand, it is important to use cool colors because they are considered calming and soothing and make the audience feel relaxed.
The teal colour represents emotional health, stability, balance, and healing. Blue shades are the shades of friendliness, calmness, and connection. Specifically, light blue colors represent health and stability.
And to show the feminine side of Yin yoga we have chosen a light brown shade because pale browns represent calmness, purity, elegance, flexibility, and also have a relaxing effect.
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Typography
The primary font that I chose for Ola Yogi is the New York font. It is a feminine, modern, elegant, and timeless serif font that strongly highlights the main qualities of the brand.
I chose Avenir to be the secondary font to complement the statement that the New York font makes with its unique features. Avenir is a modern, clean, and minimalistic sans serif font and it is neutral enough to be used for body text.
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Logo
I created the logo using 3 main components and included the 3 colours from the new colour palette.
The first component is the wave. Aside from the fact that "ola" means "wave” in Spanish, the wave also represents the flow, ease, and flexibility of the brand.
The second component is the semi-circle which represents the aspect of community and inclusion that Ola Yogi reflects.
The last component is the brand name that is written in the New York font to highlight the brand`s modern and feminine qualities.
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Website Redesign Suggestions
The website redesign suggestions included an additional section on how to create a relaxing environment, a new page with "Ola Yogi" playlists that users can play during their self-guided practice, and lastly, the usage of the updated fonts, colours, and typography.
