For Joy

Name: Focus Lab
Price range: $

For Joy is a CBD tea company founded in San Francisco with a socially conscious mission: a commitment to simple, clean ingredients, and a shared community around the things that bring us all joy.

Still in its infancy, the CBD beverage market is growing nationally without a current leader that the public recognizes and trusts. With simple ingredients, transparent production practices, and a better-tasting product, For Joy tasked us to create an authentic brand experience that would lead the CBD-beverage industry with a mission-driven brand that personifies joy.

We needed to create an identity system that felt friendly, lighthearted, and community-oriented – embodying For Joy’s brand attributes of fun, sincere, and relatable.

Our Approach

Tea is beloved across the globe with over 3 billion tons of tea consumed each year. The feeling of joy has a similar global appeal. Where competitors try to differentiate themselves with flavor combinations and ingredient profiles, For Joy instead aims to forge an emotional connection with consumers, letting the product speak for itself. We focused our efforts on conveying For Joy's mission of seeking and expressing joy in everyday life through verbal and visual identity.

For Joy believes joy has the power to bring people together, transcend barriers, and strengthen lives and communities.

Brand Strategy

Our brand strategy process uncovered that For Joy needed to appeal to Gen Z and Millennial consumers by connecting emotionally with a thoughtful simplicity and a contagious energy, while avoiding cannabis industry clichés.

We initially explored two concepts inspired by joy: "*Some Assembly Required" and "The Possibility of Perspective."

*Some Assembly Required: The experience of joy looks different for everyone. And the truth is, as good as it feels and as simple as it seems, joy takes a little work. You could say that seeking joy in life has its own asterisk: *Some assembly required.

The Possibility of Perspective: Joy can be found in unexpected places, depending on how you look at it. Two people can look at the exact same thing and come to two totally different conclusions. One player loses the game and sees failure; another sees opportunity. One person sees bumper-to-bumper traffic; another sees a chance to catch up on their favorite podcast. What if there was something that, no matter how you flipped it, no matter how many people looked at it, it felt, looked, and translated into the same thing — a universally shared experience from any perspective?

“The Possibility of Perspective” was a concept that resonated immediately.

Logo

For Joy’s logo represents the boldness of their mission and a universally shared experience of joy from any perspective. The logo is a rotational ambigram, meaning that it can be read upside down as well as right-side up. An ambigram is particularly fun for this brand because bottles are rotated upside down while you're drinking, but the logo stays the same.

Communications

We worked closely with the For Joy team to create a verbal identity that inspired joy, without sacrificing authenticity. The For Joy voice is optimistic, bold, and affable. This voice conveys open-mindedness, positivity, and acceptance, all with an upbeat, self-assured vibe that dares to be different.

Approached this way, For Joy can authentically and artlessly connect with its consumers and advance the brand mission: “To spread joy to as many people as possible.”

With a dash of boldness, For Joy both inspires energy and shows an endearing vulnerability by not being afraid to be different.

Visual Language

For Joy needed a vibrant color palette that would complement bold typography full of character. Obviously seemed like an obvious (😉) choice and a great typeface to lead the charge because it felt fun, optimistic, and its casual essence felt right at home with For Joy.

For Joy's icon style was kept fairly loose intentionally. Icons should be visually harmonious but don't stick to rigid rules for construction. Varied line weights, fills, and strokes are all relevant for For Joy's iconography style.

The swirl pattern is also a foundational element for the For Joy brand. With the assumption of no two executions being alike, this texture expresses the underlying idea behind the uniqueness of individual joy.

Illustration

Portraits are full of joy and hand-painted doodles, all coming together to tell For Joy’s story. We developed a photo style that is candid and light, not too posed or over-stylized with hand-drawn doodles. The overlaid illustrations help extend the brand in an organic way that aligned with the brand color palette.

Packaging

As a tea brand, packaging is frequently a consumer’s first point of contact with For Joy. We wanted to make sure the bottles still carried the brand attributes of fun, sincere, and relatable. Each label includes 13 translations of "joy," speaking to the global and universal nature of joy.

3D imagery adds one more element to this dynamic brand system that feels unexpected and fresh. For example, we used 3D-rendered fruit as part of the flavor beverage labels.