THE PROBLEM

REI's primary concern was that their existing transactionals needed not only a facelift, but also a deep look at messaging strategy and a complete streamlining of content. Their new transactional messages needed to be on-brand, simple to understand, and optimized for mobile.

 

THE SOLUTION

We first developed a comprehensive style guide that defined our approach. To address the messaging voice and tone, we thought about variations in transactional message types and assigned potential customer emotions/reactions to each message as positive, neutral, and sensitive. By diagramming out the messages we were able to create a scale that could be applied to the range of transactional voices to create different tones that spoke to each communication type. A mood board of other clean, efficient, and direct design examples was created to help define the transactional aesthetic. We also specified a limited color palette and created a single unifying background texture to simplify the design even further. The key was to let the messaging shine through with as few distractions as possible.

 

The style guide was well-received, approved in advance, and made the production of REI's 30+ transactional messages highly efficient and successful. 

 

 

CONCEPT BOOK

Art Direction, Design, & Copy: Kathryn Alva

Design & Copy: Kiersten Miller

 

TRANSACTIONAL TEMPLATES

Art Direction & Design: Kathryn Alva

Copy: Jack Clemens