WeLive | WeWork
Visual Designer and Product Specialist
The 2016 launch of WeLive closely mirrored the product strategy and design principles of WeWork. However, a critical need emerged to articulate and refine the brand, establish an overarching brand strategy, guidelines, and distinctly differentiate WeLive from WeWork. This necessity arose due to common misconceptions that WeLive was a "dorm for adults," exclusive to millennials, characterized solely as "co-living," and offered only temporary living solutions.
Our goals were to: clarify and refine the overall brand strategy, develop robust guidelines and collateral that created a seamless in-building and marketing experience, and a clear brand identity and messaging to communicate the product and vision at scale.
Client:
WeLive | WeWork
Role:
Visual Designer and Product Specialist
Year:
2016 - 2020
Conceptual approach
Research partnership
Collaborating with the WeWork R&D team revealed key challenges for WeLive, highlighting significant issues such as limited brand awareness and frequent misunderstandings regarding its product offerings. Individuals often responded positively and showed interest once they grasped WeLive's mission and distinctive features that set it apart from competitors. We distilled the findings into the following key insights and strategies:
_Customers better understood the brand when we showcased its cost value
_Target customers were attracted to a community that values sustainability
_There were opportunities to market WeLive as a platform to a new city
Experience-led designs
An analogy of expanding concentric circles illustrated the strategy for design at WeLive. The base was the micro-experiences of an individual within the apartment space, sequentially expanding out further to the community space, and eventually to the brand and marketing layer - inverting the approach to design from the inside-out rather than outside-in.
The branding and visual system needed to take into consideration the design of the lived experience within the interior spaces, how it is a venture brand from the parent company, and how it can differentiate its product offering from competitors.
