TLDR:
Teachable brought me on to help roll out a bold new brand identity. Work spans across storyboarding for the launch video, new email design across every flow, ads, events, templates, custom AI workflows for iterations & on-brand photo libraries, and more. I stayed on for ongoing help for about 6 months.
The Challenge
Teachable had a rebrand by an agency. The brand guide was pretty thin, and we had a very short timeline to translate the branding into a visual identity that would work across all existing assets, plus new launches. It was a period of time between Teachable getting the brand guide delivered, and before having a new Creative Director make their changes and decide how it would end up showing up in the world.
Other challenges that came up:
Photo selection from stock, and on-brand AI portrait generations take too long - prompting back and forth and getting one good generation out of many tries. They asked me for a way to figure out one prompt template that anyone could use for a good result.
Photo selection from stock, and on-brand AI portrait generations take too long - prompting back and forth and getting one good generation out of many tries. They asked me for a way to figure out one prompt template that anyone could use for a good result.
The Process
I was brought on pre-launch to help roll out assets everywhere in preparation of launch, while brand was still being refined. I was then retained several months after for ongoing work. We stress-tested everything—doing the legwork of color pairing explorations from a palette we were unsure about, and deciding the weight of the palette across all marketing assets. Every single touchpoint went through meticulous exploration to get to a place we all felt good about, which kept evolving with stakeholders over time.
Other solutions I proposed:
Building email components in Figma to easily change colors, content types, headers, footers, desktop to mobile, etc. This way, margins are retained, and everything is cohesive across the board, and net new designs are able to be done faster.
Building email components in Figma to easily change colors, content types, headers, footers, desktop to mobile, etc. This way, margins are retained, and everything is cohesive across the board, and net new designs are able to be done faster.
I introduced the Teachable team to Weavy (now Figma Weave) which I have been using for most of my AI workflows. I knew this would be the perfect solution for consistent, easier to 'prompt' AI images. Node-based AI workflows allow you to create built-in controls, and with Weavy, even an app-style end result for anyone to use even easier. More on that below!
The Result
A very well-received rebrand launch, with a great launch video. There was tons of positive feedback online, and Teachable was instantly elevated. The team also had a solid, component-driven email design system to carry through all email needs, and a repeatable, beautiful container system for emails, ads, etc. All of marketing now had access to on-brand portrait generation for immediate needs—for example, spinning up 20+ landing pages in a day, each targeting a different archetype, or creating a school using the same creator. My emails were also featured in Really Good Emails, which is always nice.
Storyboarding
Email Design
Overall, I defined the header, hero footer, and the text-only look (which is featured on Really Good Emails) and skinned about 14 different email sequences. For reskinning flows, I developed a fun, easy to use and flex modular container system. It's versatile enough to keep pushing, and flex with each need, but consistent enough to keep a cohesive look across email flows. This leaves more play-room for ad-hoc emails and campaigns, and a nice system for evergreen.
Paid Ads
A few selects from many batches of paid ads performed well.
Node-based AI Workflows
Using Weavy (Figma Weave) I built a workflow where you can input all the characteristics of a person you'd need to generate for a given instance, and put it into an easy-to-use app style interface.
I ended up building several photoshoot iterators, all for different targeted audiences; group photos, B2B, B2C, more corporate, more small agency, etc.
I also made several others for iterating YouTube creative; you submit a thumbnail, and it iterates 5 more - focused on high-performing YouTube properties to create more engaging options to AB test. I made an additional version of this for paid ads.
