UULA · Branding & visual language · 2022
A new visual language for UULA
UULA is an educational app for 12–18 year olds, used alongside school. It wasn’t appealing to its full potential audience: its look felt dated, and its design system was cluttered and near the end of its life. As design lead, I explored new directions for the brand and the app’s visual language.
- Client
- UULA
- Role
- Design lead: branding, UI/UX, illustration art direction, concepts
- Year
- 2022
- Status
- Exploratory work
How
Research the market, write a thesis we could test, turn it into several visual concepts, test them with users, and develop the winner.
Cartoon, first in the user tests
An animal world that includes people. Bright, friendly colours, forms and illustrations compete for a young audience’s attention and work for all genders. The student is the protagonist: they go to school every day, but their problems belong to this world, not the real one. It’s an escapist world, with more encouragement and less pressure.
The screens follow the app’s existing flows.
Clean, second in the user tests
A streamlined, clearer version of the existing app, with simplicity as its point. Users responded strongly to it, and it stayed a candidate for further development.
For its gamification screens and intermissions, I assembled a reference library of 3D assets.