Again in my broadcast journalism days within the early 2000s, I carried a silver dictaphone roughly the scale of a home brick. It went in every single place with me round Stoke and Birmingham: council chambers, police press conferences (by no means enjoyable), the odd movie star junket. I as soon as pointed it at Will Smith (who was charming). Then got here the enjoyable half: sitting in a nook afterwards with headphones on, scrubbing backwards and forwards by means of the tape, typing out the story with one finger whereas my editor paced behind me, asking how lengthy I might be.
So you possibly can think about my delight when Granola turned up. Okay, it is over 20 years too late. And sure, it is AI. But it surely’s one of many few new instruments I might argue is genuinely helpful, as a result of it does the bit I by no means needed to do and leaves me the bit I did… It takes the notes so I can keep within the dialog.
Which is why I used to be happy to be taught our buddies at Ragged Edge had received the job of overhauling its branding. And what they’ve completed with it’s price exploring.
The brand new identification turned a trending subject on X the day it launched, and Granola recorded its highest day by day downloads ever. Within the month that adopted, it turned the world’s second-fastest-growing software program model, based on Ramp. Inside three months, Granola had secured $125m in funding at a $1.5bn valuation. Not unhealthy for a brand that appears prefer it was scribbled on a serviette. Extra on that shortly.
Progress over course of
Most productiveness manufacturers promote you effectivity and predictability. Granola went the opposite manner. “We’re constructing Granola to really be useful within the messiness of contemporary work, for individuals who need to be current and ready even when there’s barely a breath between conferences,” says Jack Cully, founding marketer at Granola. “It ought to really feel useful on busy days, an AI notepad for conferences that briefs you beforehand, retains you current whereas it captures the main points, and helps you get extra completed after. This rebrand lets us say that plainly: progress over course of.”
Christy Madden, technique director at Ragged Edge, places it extra bluntly. “Productiveness apps fail to stay as much as that identify. They really feel like one more arbitrary layer, in the way in which of the particular work. You are feeling the distinction with Granola immediately. By caring for the notes, it makes area so that you can keep current in each assembly and deal with the concepts that matter most. It’s a fantastically designed software for anybody bold about their work.”
The temporary, then, was to take a product already beloved by Silicon Valley’s C-suite and make it a model that information staff in every single place really know.
By people, for people
This is the strain Ragged Edge needed to work with. With a class famend for having design that feels frictionless, they went on the lookout for the other. The Granola identification is hand made, witty and heat.
Take the brand. Sure, it is a ‘G’, which is sensible sufficient as a reference to the identify. But it surely’s natural and freeform, the form of an thought jotted down quick in a notepad or on the nook of a serviette. It virtually jogs my memory of my Teeline shorthand, which I immediately forgot after my exams.
“It is particularly designed to really feel barely imperfect and unmistakably human, an antidote to the overly smooth and impersonal identities that dominate the class,” says Jessica Bong-Woon, artistic director at Ragged Edge.
Then there’s the kind, and that is the bit I really like. The identification contains a bespoke script primarily based on the precise handwriting of Sam Stephenson, Granola’s co-founder. Tons of of handwritten letters, labored up right into a typeface with a number of variants of every character, so it shifts and evolves because it’s used, the way in which actual handwriting does. The voice it carries is emotionally clever and down-to-earth, and it does not thoughts a joke.
The color palette evolves what Granola already had: a heat, earthy inexperienced that retains its distance from the colourful RGBs you see in every single place else in AI. There’s additionally a brand new illustration model referred to as “findings”, which layers texture, color and pictures to seize the sensation of a working day nicely spent.
“The temptation in AI is to appear like everybody else as a result of the market is transferring so shortly,” says Max Ottignon, co-founder at Ragged Edge. “Granola selected a more durable path. To construct a model with a transparent standpoint in regards to the function AI ought to play in folks’s lives. That conviction is what offers the work its affect.”
Granola just isn’t for breakfast
Within the weeks after launch, Ragged Edge and Granola took the model out into the streets of San Francisco, New York and London.
The San Fran marketing campaign spoke to tech leaders whereas dodging the techno-babble of each different billboard in that metropolis: “Being current is an influence transfer”.
New York and London had extra enjoyable with the identify. “Granola just isn’t for breakfast” ran throughout billboards, trains, bus stops, and full-station takeovers, introducing a wholly new viewers to an AI product dedicated to doing issues in another way. And it clearly labored.
I will be trustworthy, if a chunk of software program had informed my 2003 self that in the future it will transcribe the interview for me, I might have hugged it. And that silver brick would’ve fortunately gone within the bin.
