Brand design case study

Epic Brand Guide

Refreshing a Children's Reading Platform

Stock art made Epic's reading app feel dated and generic. I spearheaded a brand refresh initiative — establishing the visual tone, creating comprehensive guidelines, and collaborating closely with cross-functional teams.

Role
Creative Lead (Art Direction, Design, Illustration)
Stakeholders
Marketing, Brand, Product, Copy
Shipped
Complete Brand Refresh & Guidelines
Epic Brand Guide cover

The challenge

Establishing a New Visual Identity

This spread marked the beginning of my efforts to visually conceptualize how the brand refresh could be portrayed in a layout. The exploration helped establish the level of attitude, confidence, and quirkiness that ultimately became the defining characteristics of the new brand identity.

Brand guide introduction spread

Process

Early Explorations

Early-stage explorations for establishing the updated brand. I played with different styles, layouts, and messaging — getting messy with paints and markers along the way.

Early brand explorations in InDesign: THE EPIC BRAND spread
Epic Originals characters with colorful swirl designs
Nice!!! neon lightbulb illustration
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 1
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 2
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 3
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 4
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 5
Hand-drawn sketch exploration 6
Brand values: Wonder, Creativity, Humor, Heart, Delight, Surprise
ROAR! monster illustration spread
Epic Originals character illustrations

Brand foundation

Colors & Typography

Working with the creative director and in-house originals team, I selected colors from our most popular series — then named each color after beloved characters and titles to reinforce brand connection.

Primary

Secondary

Tap a color to copy its hex code.

Typography grid with Epic letters in brand colors

Logo system

Brand Identity & Logo Evolution

When re-designing the logo I felt it was important to keep the old exclamation point because it visually and in search separated us from other brands with the name of epic. We built the logo to be flexible so we could alter it for different promotions.

The Epic Expression: learning, exploration, and an unexpected journey
THE EPIC LOGO: sticker variations showing logo flexibility
Logo variation: pink dripping
Logo variation: light style
Logo variation: neon lightbulb

Voice & tone

Capturing Childlike Spirit

At the heart of this transformation was infusing the brand with attitude, confidence, and quirkiness. Collaborating with our in-house copywriter, I developed rough brushstroke typography that brought warmth and authenticity to our messaging.

Voice and tone guidelines
Voice and tone text pattern
Fill-in-the-blanks typography: Where will bravery take them today?

The fill-in-the-blanks style encapsulates the balance of rough childlike hand writing with the clean starkness of our new brand font — representing childlike wonder and creativity while nodding to the educational aspect of the brand.

Visual language

Signature Elements

I directed the creation of a dynamic swirl design to link characters from various original series — the colors came from analyzing our most popular content. The collage style, inspired by stickers on notebooks, became another core building block of the brand.

Dynamic swirl design
Collage style examples

Photography direction

Capturing Wonder

This pose ended up being an effective way to highlight books and show captivated kids full of wonder — looking up physically and metaphorically toward their dreams. One of the ways I balanced the chaos of the fun childlike messiness and a streamlined educational brand is by tracing the brand fonts on my iPad.

View the photoshoot case study
Pose example with kids and books
Lifestyle image: kids with tablets
Lifestyle image: children reading

Applications

In Product & Marketing

A crucial part of the refresh was revamping how we showcase app screens and book covers. The goal: draw attention to books while emphasizing enjoyment through doodles and illustrations rather than text-heavy descriptions.

Revitalized visual example 1
Our vision is for a better world through learning: kids with backpacks
Revitalized visual example 4

Results

Impact & Outcomes

The brand refresh played a key role in driving Epic's growth to become the world's largest digital reading platform for kids, engaging 75 million readers consuming over 1 billion books annually — ultimately leading to a successful acquisition.

0M+

Active readers on platform

0B+

Books read annually

2.5×

Account creation lift from book page redesign

Next project

Originals

Turning exclusive content into a growth engine for Epic.

View project
Grid of Epic Originals book covers