CARRIE MORGAN YOGA BRAND & WEBSITE DESIGN

Role: Lead Designer (worked with software engineers and designers from the Arketa Team)

Time in role: ~ 3 months

Skills: 

• User research
• User persona
• Customer journey mapping
• Brand strategy
• Brand design
• Logo development
• UI/UX design
• Wireframing
• Prototyping
• Website Development

Problem statement

After 20+ years of teaching yoga, Carrie Morgan was ready to establish her own brand that offers a modern twist on traditional yoga practices. I was tasked with building Carrie Morgan Yoga from concept to fruition.  

To expand beyond her strong customer base, Carrie needed a digital platform that strategically marketed CMY to prospective clients while offering a seamless end-to-end scheduling and purchasing experience. Additionally, Carrie was launching her brand in the midst of the COVID pandemic, which created unique customer patterns on the frequency and methods of practicing yoga. The challenge was how to leverage the significant and consistent rise in yoga’s popularity, particularly via online, live classes. 

Final solution

From logo/content creation to product strategy to website development, I led the product-building process and designed a brand that emits the true essence of Carrie Morgan Yoga. CMY conveys Carrie’s unique methodology, resonates with target customers, clearly communicates Carrie’s array of products and services, and enables simple scheduling and purchasing functionality. Following deep collaboration with Carrie Morgan and the Arketa Team, Carrie Morgan Yoga was brought to life.

Carrie Morgan’s platform and service offerings addressed the industry research that consumers, who have come to embrace online yoga classes, will continue on this pandemic-related yoga trend. Offering a combination of online, in-person, and on-demand classes, CMY would capitalize on the quickly growing yoga space! 

The success of these efforts is validated by the 60+ yogis that enjoy Carrie’s 5 weekly classes, on-demand instruction, and private lessons. It was fascinating to bring Carrie Morgan’s vision to life! I am truly proud of the final product that we built together. View the complete website at carriemorganyoga.com.

Design Process

Understanding the Target Audience

Starting at point zero, we built Carrie Morgan Yoga’s foundation, narrowing down on the right audience. Carrie’s current yogis consisted of 25 to 55 year old women that value, prioritize, and invest in their physical and mental health. This is the ideal customer, who already understands the power of yoga, specifically the benefits of activating deep muscles, creating space in the body, and translating anatomical actions into recognizable results.

In addition to developing this persona, I focused on casting a wider net and capturing individuals, often health-focused, that would benefit from the integration of yoga into their daily regimen. A creative orientation of CMY’s products and services would be critical to resonate with this customer group.

Another aspect of the target audience is efficiency and effectiveness when it comes to their exercise. Often those practicing yoga are looking to find solace after demanding work and life schedules, so their time on the mat has to matter.

Building on the knowledge of behaviors and emotions of existing customers as well as analyzing the competition, I established Carrie’s brand position as “an energizing yoga practice that effectively integrates strong, alignment-based core work with the tenets of physical therapy to build strength, flexibility and awareness.”

Whether it’s a 30-minute core class or a strength-based 1-hour flow, Carrie’s integrated approach is untraditional yet not too eccentric to divert prospective customers. Competitors offer the classic yoga movement, so it was essential to convey Carrie Morgan Yoga’s unique value proposition: “Strength, stability, and flexibility all in one!”

Establishing the Brand 

When it came to the brand name, the direction was clear. After 20+ years in the yoga space, Carrie Morgan built significant momentum that needed to be leveraged. In addition to monopolizing on Carrie’s brand recognition, the brand name needed to quickly communicate the “what” (aka yoga). After flowing through several iterations, rather than overcomplicating it, Carrie and I decided that “Carrie Morgan Yoga” would be the most effective choice. 

Moving forward in the brand-building process, Carrie and I collaborated to define the “why” behind Carrie Morgan Yoga. Partially initiated during brand positioning, the brand story was further refined to provide insight into the evolution of Carrie’s methodology and convey the impact of incorporating strength, stability and laughter into everyday life. Carrie played a large role in crafting this story, which essentially came down to:

“Yoga flow is great. Strength-based training is great. But, people rarely get the transformation and deep muscle activation that leads to real results. They also often lack the proper knowledge on how to adapt their bodies with mindful movement. CMY exists to fill this gap in a fun, enjoyable, and energetic way! Class is for anyone looking for a sustainable and sweaty exercise that strengthens the mind and body. Flowing with Carrie and her lively energy is an awesome, one-of-a-kind experience!” 

Now, it came time to translate this brand into the visual components and design that would carry it forward! Establishing the brand look & feel meant focusing on several areas, including:

• Brand colors that influence emotions and interactions towards Carrie Morgan Yoga! We thoughtfully explored variations to find a color combination that conveys a strong, relatable brand. Due to the color blue’s association with stability, harmony, peace, and calm, it served as the foundation in the overall color scheme. Applying the principles of color theory, I intentionally chose a cooler, more vibrant shade of blue with a hint of purple (a color connected with power, wisdom, and spirituality) to evoke excitement and movement. Building upon this, I expanded the palette towards dark shades by applying deeper purple tones and achieved softer tones with shades of white and gray to showcase cleanliness and goodness. The goal was to unite the brand under a consistent palette that was clean, crisp, confident, and composed while maintaining a softness and lightness.

• Font choices that contribute to achieving the desired modern, flowy, and energetic look and feel. Several sans serif options were considered, particularly the Avenir font; however, Montserrat was chosen due to its ability to be bolded to denote emphasis while still appearing light and clean in its regular form. Also, Montserrat has superior compatibility with browsers, decreasing chances for default fonts to activate.

• Imagery that brings CMY to life. A special photoshoot was scheduled to capture Carrie showcasing a variety of poses that reflect the strength, flexibility, and laughter that are ingrained in her brand. As with the color and font approach, we aimed to balance “flowy and light” with “dynamic and strong.” The clothing choice also served to compliment the brand palette, strengthening and softening the colors further.

Largely influenced by the colors, fonts, and imagery, the final logo and brand mark was rooted in Carrie’s commitment to balancing strength with flexibility. Throughout the iterative logo creation process, we aimed to capture CMY in a recognizable visual that would intrigue existing and prospective customers alike.

After some loose drafts, we landed on a concept of fluidity within a firm foundation that would be visualized as a solid circle shape with a flowy and colorful interior. To refine the final design, I used Procreate to integrate an artistic component and strived to create 3D movement with colors based on the brand palette. The font, Upper East Side, offered a bolder and modern sans serif font that  would make Carrie Morgan Yoga truly pop within the circle. Three border lines would surround the circle to signify the three parts (“Strength, Flexibility, & Lots of Laughter”) that are integrated into Carrie Morgan Yoga! 

Website Development

The last step was to consistently integrate the brand and its visual components into each customer touchpoint, specifically the website. The website would be an extension of the brand, providing deeper insight into the brand story and reflecting a bright, confident, and empowering appearance. The website needed to tell the CMY story and inspire others to join the journey. A significant effort was spent moving from journey mapping through low-fi concepts into high-fidelity prototypes and development-ready designs (in Figma) for the software engineers to implement. The user experience was the top priority! From the button colors to text/image placement to readability, the user flow from entry to booking was considered at each step in the website development process. Integrations of Sutra scheduling (now Arketa), Stripe, and Zoom were coordinated to contribute to a seamless scheduling, payment, and streaming experience. When customers enter the site, they should be guided with limited stress and constraints! 

Once entering the website, the customer would be greeted with a clean display that prioritized the “Book a Class” or “View On Demand” options with distinct buttons in the main blue color. This enabled returning customers to quickly find their destination and new customers to understand the options while still having the opportunity to explore further. The addition of parallax animation created movement, while the contrasting white background elevated the brand palette. Scrolling down, customers would be presented with an option to learn more about private lessons as well as a compact display of the class varieties. Customers could choose to learn more about specific classes or Carrie’s methodology. Each touchpoint on the site was in close proximity to an action, such as “Book a Class,” gently guiding the customer to move forward. In hindsight, I would have condensed the main menu to create more visual space for the customer to intake the information. 

Templates for Social Media Marketing 

Once Carrie Morgan Yoga was launched to the public and quality checked, I stayed on to translate CMY brand’s look & feel into a renewed social media image. I worked in Canva to set up a variety of CMY-styled templates that Carrie Morgan would use to maintain brand consistency via social media outlets.