Converting a USP into a cast of versatile characters.
Thortful is a challenger in the greeting card category, but its brand had become tired, muddled and sprawling. To rejuvenate its visual identity, we wanted to champion Thortful’s true USP: the thousands of creators and designs in its marketplace which help people find the perfect card for whatever they want to say. To celebrate this diversity, we created a set of ‘thortles’ – unique characters that personify the range of emotions that can be conveyed when you ‘let your thorts run wild’. In communications they play a literal role, but in the brand system they are a helpful and playful visual device.
The versatile shapes can morph from thortle characters to a range of design devices, from transparent content containers and colourful backdrops, to eye-catching augmentations on real-life product photography. These distinctive characters dovetail with a similarly ownable colour palette and bespoke typography to create a disruptive identity that runs across multiple channels. The impact on Thortful’s visual world has been transformative.
The thortle shapes can shift between modes; able to morph from Thortle characters, to form backdrops, create image containers – even be used physcially within product photography.
The Thortles weave their way into our typographic voice too – with modified Thortle shaped letterforms.
