We knew how unique Astéri’s vision was, and how the company needed a strong brand identity to reflect that to the world. To articulate our client’s new brand, we embarked on a multi-step journey of exploration, research, and execution.

Crafting the Strategy

As a first step, our team at Kairos facilitated a core strategy workshop with client leadership. Through this collaborative session, we aligned on project goals, identified the brand’s unique selling proposition, and developed an initial set of customer profiles to help guide our branding decisions.  

Our team also performed an industry and competitor analysis of skincare companies in the U.S. market to complete our understanding of existing brands and their relationships with target customers.

In the process, we uncovered meaningful insights that would strongly influence our work in designing Astéri’s brand identity – from the importance of helping young athletes fight against stereotypes (such as in the cheer industry) and deal with surrounding pressures to their desire for value-driven causes, inclusivity and acceptance.

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Naming the Brand

Based on our insights, we decided that our client’s new brand had to capture all the qualities that young athletes were looking for. The brand needed to empower them to feel strong, bold and confident, but in a playful, fun way.

To come up with a list of potential brand names, we explored the history of cheer athletics, as well as different roots for words that evoked strength, risk-taking and motion.

Finally, we struck upon the name “Astéri,” a Greek word meaning “star,” and also used in Greek phrases such as “rising star,” “bright star,” and “golden star.” The name comes from the Ancient Greek word “aster,” and is the root for other modern, star-related words such as “asteroid,” “astronaut” and “astronomy.”

The word perfectly encapsulated the inspiring ambition and talent of a young athlete, and successfully became the brand’s new name.

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Shaping the Brand Voice

Next, now that we had the name, our team needed to articulate a personality for Astéri – a spark to animate its public-facing self and branding collateral.

Again, using our understanding of our target audiences, we knew the skincare brand needed to feel aspirational, yet approachable. Young athletes needed to feel inspired, accepted and supported, all at the same time.

Our team at Kairos crafted a persona for Astéri as the cool, older sister who gives the best, affirming advice and tips on everything, from skincare to self-acceptance. We designed a go-to guide for our client team that spelled out Astéri’s brand story and personality, and offered tone references for future marketing or editorial content.

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Designing the Brand Identity

Our last step was bringing Astéri visually to life through a logo and core brand stylescape. A set of brand keywords guided our design work: “Empowering. Bold. Active.”

To embody these guiding qualities, we chose a daring yellow, distinct black and energetic white for the brand’s main colors. For the logo, we offered a text option that featured “Astéri” in a strong, all-caps typeface. The name was slightly italicized and right-leaning, to communicate the brand’s dynamism and movement.  

We created a four-point star as an impactful symbol evoked repeatedly throughout our visual branding for Astéri – our subconscious reminder of the name’s inspiring meaning. The star appeared in numerous contexts: as an accent above the text logo’s “e,” as its own separate logo mark option, in color overlays or cut-out shapes in marketing images, and as a repeated mark for patterned backgrounds.

We additionally designed a stylescape that helped the client team visualize the different ways Astéri’s branding could manifest, including packaging, stickers, advertisements, website interface and even a store design.  

Common elements throughout included: visuals of young athletes in graceful, leaping or dynamic form, minimalist graphics, playful holographic / reflective accents, as well as bold, repeated, and often-geometric patterns.      

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From their company’s core brand statement to its bold new brand identity, our client team felt like their vision had been successfully captured.

At the very beginning, the Astéri team had come to us with a fledgling idea for a company that would transform how young athletes felt about their skincare – but with a complete, blank slate as to what that might look and feel like.

Through our collaborative process, meticulous brand strategy and thoughtful design work, our team at Kairos ultimately helped to bring Astéri’s inspiring vision to life.

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