Building a Second Brain

Refreshed brand for online school

OPPORTUNITY
Building a Second Brain (BASB) is a cohort-based course on the leading edge of personal knowledge management, helping thousands of people to manage information overwhelm, find clarity in their work and personal lives, and supercharge their creative output. While its original branding had appealed to hard-core techies, the company needed to evolve its visual identity to match (and attract more of) its rapidly growing mainstream audience. The branding also needed to show that the program had become a sophisticated and premium (yet fun) experience.

SOLUTION
After conducting audience research (and taking the 5-week program myself), I solo-designed a comprehensive visual identity system that balanced a digital look with a human, friendly feel.

Circuitry reflects the company’s technological underpinnings and remixes flexibly to suggest different meanings across digital and print media. A quirky yet highly legible typeface helps copy to take on a more personable voice. A muted color palette with pops of energetic accents provides both sophistication and playful warmth.

Original logo

The refreshed logo

Guidebook

I produced a brand guidebook detailing the new visual identity system, articulating the design strategy and writing the copy for all mockups. I also produced a library of circuit graphic elements for easy content creation. The brand media kit is here. Or, click to view only the guidebook.

Click to view guidebook

Digital assets

Applications

During the rebranding, the founder was writing a book about the course. I produced diagrams and illustrations that are featured in the book and suggested cover designs to integrate with the new branding. The cover that Atria Books produced (view here) shared similarities with my concepts below.

Worksheets

Click to view sample of workbook

Curriculum map

We decided to diverge from the visual identity a bit (okay, a lot) with an old-fashioned treasure map to portray the adventure and fun that is the course experience. I brainstormed the location names with the team and I designed this map to have interactive links transporting the user to each of the lesson modules within the learning portal.

Print book (interior design and illustrations)

OPPORTUNITY
Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, was publishing Tiago Forte’s much-anticipated second book on productivity (the book hit #1 on Amazon’s Business Project Management list months before its release in August 2023, with thousands of preorders). The manuscript needed diagrams and illustrations to portray concepts about information organization and creativity. Tiago advocated for Atria Books to contract me for the book design, and they did.

SOLUTION
I designed all of the book interiors and created more than 50 spot illustrations, patterns, and diagrams. By request of the publisher, I used only two colors throughout the book.

Samples of illustrations for the book. (Examples of book interiors coming soon!)