Veranda Brand

Creative director, brand strategist, designer

Much of the developed world is now dependent on purchase deliveries. Beyond books and accessories, we’ve become accustomed to even ordering perishables online. Food, prescription drugs—you name it, we get it by the tap of a few buttons, right from our couch. This modern wave of purchase behaviour provides competitive opportunities for innovation and a hastened need for security. 

This is why Veranda is making home deliveries a more considered process. Focused on economizing the last mile of deliveries while prioritizing the safety and integrity of the products delivered, Veranda has created a passive-energy refrigerated delivery receptacle for front porch deliveries. Using Bluetooth technology, the box is secured, thwarting the attempts of porch pirates, all while keeping the delivered contents (and the recipient) cool and contained. 

The Veranda system, comprised of a thermally controlled porch box and app, provides a more convenient, low-cost, and sustainable means for receiving deliveries from a wide array of grocers, ensuring the quality and safety of the contents received. Imagine never having to wait in that dreaded delivery window again. 

The objective was to develop a brand that would tell the story of a technical product in a way that appealed to various peoples’ lifestyles. Beyond this, the brand needed to appeal to investors and prospective partners in the product in order to bring the product into the homes of the masses. The project wold involve developing the brand platform and identity including logo/identity system design, stationery, marketing collateral, UI kit, MVP website, logo animation, and sonic branding.

It was quite a feat to create a brand from scratch that represents a product with technical and aesthetic sophistication that appeals to such a broad audience. This is why the process started with a number of strategy workshops to ensure we knew exactly who we were speaking to, what we needed to say, and how we needed to say it. That would then inform how the brand visually came to life and set the direction for the tone of voice the brand would speak in. 

Before designing the identity, we began by setting the foundation for the brand’s communication. We defined the brands big idea, narrative, vision, mission, unique value proposition, functional and emotional benefits, personality and attributes, brand values, archetypes and personas. This process involved stakeholder questionnaires and workshops, industry research, product assessments, audience persona definition, market / investor strategy, messaging strategy and copywriting. 

Through multiple workshops with the founders, we identified elements of the product that needed to be represented through the brand’s communication and uncovered aspects of the human experience that would necessitate its use. These sessions incorporated perspectives from varying disciplines, spanning business strategy, technology, design, and overall brand experience. This process of discovery and distillation informed the brand’s communication platform we developed and set our sights on a visual and verbal identity that would deliver. 

With the brand platform defined, I began the identity design phase with a more considered vision. We began by aligning on visual territories and narrowed down our exploration from there. I explored a number of directions to conceptually visualize Veranda’s offering and ultimately landed on a solution the entire team was excited to rally around. The resulting identity was one that articulated the brand’s value both to end-users as well as Veranda’s most significant customers: the retailers who would promote the use of the product at large.

Paired with the approachable and distinctive typeface National from Klim Type Foundry, and supported by a forest green backdrop, the mark would represent the company’s value on more than one front. Overall, the shape creates an abstracted “v”, while also reminiscent of a fountain, representing the wealth of retail product variety and customer data the Veranda system offers. The motion created by the shape is a nod to a drop and a departure (delivery), comprised of 6 lines, each representing one of the 6 values of the brand. On a practical level, the mark was made up of minimal shapes, easy to translate when carved into physical material.

Defining the colour palette was challenging, as the colours would need to visually support the product colours. The product designer I worked with on this had painstakingly defined multiple colour options for the product, selecting them based on broad customer preferences and tones that would not look offensive or overpowering on the front or side of a house.

The brand expression we developed resulted in a substantially higher perceived value that not only appealed to the product’s customers but also drove enthusiasm from investors as well. Multiple advisors to the brand have assured them that the company’s value substantially increased after the brand project, with the founders raising rounds of investment and celebrity partnerships with companies and individuals in Canada and the US.