This final post of the lifetokens process series is about the last big phase of the project, the lifetokens webstore. It’s almost an injustice to condense the entire site down to a single post because it was really more like half the project. As with any online store, the site is the face of the whole company. Someone browsing Gapers Block or notcot for interesting things is not unlike someone strolling down a city street looking into storefronts. We knew it needed to be grabbing, friendly and most importantly, it needed to say what lifetokens is right upfront.

This whole project has come together in a very different visual style than I am used to working in, and this is a very good thing. It isn’t that I am not a colorful, friendly designer… we just tend to have, for lack of a better word, more ’serious’ clients. From a selfish view, lifetokens is a wonderful addition to our portfolio for this reason. This shift in style really became apparent to me when I began working on those first homepage mock-ups.

This is just one of several mock-ups that slowly got us closer to the final site design. When we began work on the website we first mapped out all the functionality we needed to create to have the perfect lifetokens.com. There were going to be some interesting challenges in developing but the design and organization of the site should be pretty simple. Text and images should be big and bold, colors should be bright and eye-catching and it should be very clear where to go for more information or to purchase a token.

It would eventually take a very conscious effort on my part to steer away from what we ended up calling the ’software’ style. This mock-up is clean, well organized, everything you need for a decent website. The problem is you could substitute lifetokens for anything and it would work just as well.

What we needed to figure out was how to give the site the same character we had given to the logo and tokens. We began by flooding the site with color. The backgrounds were no longer white and we even used color as the basis of the site organization. Any general site pages (home, how it works, T&C) would be blue, the shop and checkout would be green, about & contact and the retrieve page is yellow and personal account pages would be red. This worked really well as a method of organizing and separating each section while still having the site feel cohesive.

If you haven’t done so, poke around at lifetokens to see what we mean. The rest of the design really just fell into place with this system.

The retrieval page is the exception to that rule. When someone receives a token in the mail and then takes the time to retrieve it, we wanted it to be a nice rewarding experience. Nothing flashy or over-the-top, just nice. By using Flash we give the experience a little movement and audio. The user enters the code on the back of their token. The Flash movie contacts the database, receives all of the information attached to that code (token design, sender, message) and populates the page with that information. The token then flips and a simple chime (b-flat scale!) is played. Nice…

So that’s it, I would like to thank you for reading all of the lifetokens process posts. You deserve a lifetoken. If you enjoyed them let us know and we will keep doing them for future and past projects.

From the first day of the lifetokens project, designing the token mailer was the one part of the process we were most excited about tackling. Maybe that was because it wasn’t simply designing a mailer. When someone receives a lifetoken in their mailbox, we assume they know nothing of the product. That means we were designing the whole experience of lifetokens from mailbox to reveal to retrieval.

The mailer also came with it’s own unique set of challenges. We were very conscious of the fact that 95% of mail is junk and bills so it needed to stand out. We knew anytime you deal with the USPS you have to work within their size and weight requirements to avoid extra postage fees. It was extremely important that the tokens arrive safe and sound inside but given our budget for the mailer, it was clear we needed to be creative. We were confident we could make it happen without the need to convert or glue anything, but instead use die cutting, folding and stickers to do the job.

Before we put any emphasis on what would be printed on the mailer, we had to finalize a shape and structure. To do that, we mocked up 3 or 4 designs, inserted blank tokens and sent them around the country. Oddly, some of our very first prototypes are really close to our final mailer.

My brother Marc was extra helpful in giving us feedback on prototype mailers. Several were sent to him in North Carolina and he sent back descriptions and camera phone pictures of the state they arrived in.

We are very happy with the final mailer shape because it meets and exceeds all the goals we had up front. Each mailer folds up to a size of 5.25″ x 4″ and is held closed by a single circular sticker on the back which is appropriately the same size as the tokens themselves. On the inside, the mailers are die-cut to hold each token in place, and a little window is punched out to reveal the unique code on the back of the tokens. Working closely with the invaluable Gary Mordhorst at AccuColor Plus, we were able to get the mailers down to a price that fit the budget perfectly.

Once we had a shape we were confident in, we began designing the actual content of the mailer. We decided to keep the exterior of each mailer fairly simple, using only a single ink and relying on the fact that there was something inside to set it apart from the junk. Having a minimal, conservative design on the outside of the mailer would allow us to really make an impact with the interior.

Inside the mailer is where we really opened up and had some fun. This idea of revealing became the focus of the mailer design and because of the way it folded and unfolded, we treated the experience almost like a storyboard presentation. Frame one, tear the sticker and reveal the lifetokens logo. Lucky you!

Frame two, you learn that this token in chosen specifically for you and not generic junk. You then briefly learn what this lifetokens thing is all about. Below that, your token is presented in place by 3 semicircle die-cuts.

Finally you make the final fold and see your unique code and instructions on how the reveal your personal message and sender.

A motif of ’shine’ or rays was starting to make it’s way into the brand beginning with the “Legend of Zelda” elements of the logo concept and really developing with the flagship ‘Proud of You’ token design. Working the rays into the mailer was a perfect place to utilize a varnish. Amazingly, Gary already had an overstock of a unique mother-of-pearl varnish that looked beautiful when overprinted on our saturated primary color scheme. The mailers are printed on Bright White 80lbs. cover Mohawk SuperFine and we went with a final print job of 6/1 as opposed to Process to assure all of our colors are just right. The two extra plates were more than worth it.

See more beauty shots of the mailer in the image galleries at lifetokens.com.

And a side note, a very special thanks to Andy Schwegler of Letterform for the killer photoshoot. They have been a huge help in telling the story of lifetokens. If it were possible for corporations to marry, SotM would have proposed to them many years ago.

Any alumnus of a design school working in the field will tell you that they miss their college days where the concept was the most important part of a project. In the real world most assignments come with restrictions from branding guidelines, excessive direction from an art director, unheeded direction from the client, etc. This was not the case with lifetokens, especially in the design of the actual tokens. At least at product launch, lifetokens were to be almost pure concept. How can we visually purify human feelings down to their simplest parts?

When Jamie, liketokens owner, came to us he did have a clear idea of what a lifetoken should be but only a loose idea of how to get there. There was an initial list of 10 ’sentiments’, a color scheme put in place by the logo and the physical media. 1.5″ diameter wooden tokens which would be painted with unique white paint to would allow us to print full color on them. We felt the biggest hurdle was going to be getting one token done so we could establish a style for the whole series.

We began by going in several different directions, most of which were clearly wrong from the get go. However a few of the original designs and sketches were beginning to feel right. One set of designs, the infographic inspired set, really stood out and would become the basis of the final tokens.

Infographics concept series – Anyone who knows me knows that I have a passion for information graphics and I was interested in trying to create ‘infographics’ based on our 10 sentiments. Visually, this idea was getting really close to what Jamie had in mind for the tokens, but the text and stylized human figures were a little too literal for our first series. Still, we knew we were on the right track.

Now that we could smell our final style, it was time to brainstorm and find matching designs for each sentiment. For some this would come very easily and for others it would take several rounds. Unlike most design problems, the focus here was not to make sure each token clearly communicated the same message to every person but instead to portray the feeling of each sentiment while leaving the exact meaning a little cryptic.

The 10 original sentiments were: Inner Circle, New Friendship, Lasting Love, New Love, Platonic Love, Thank You, Proud of You, Say Sorry, I Forgive You and Missing You.

Sentiments like “New Love“, “Proud of You” and “Inner Circle” came together easily. Some were even based directly off of their original design in the infographic series.

Other sentiments took many rounds of revisions and failures before we were finally happy with the design.

While it was really exciting to have a full series of lifetokens designed and ready, there was one final very important thing that needed to be created and finalized before we could move forward with the rest of the project. A single design for the reverse side of the tokens to match the series, giving special consideration to the unique retrieval code printed on each one.

If you haven’t already done so, check out all of the token designs (including alternate colors) in the lifetokens shop and check back often because plans are already underway to add new series’ in the future.

With the launch of the new SotM website last month, one thing we really concentrated on was letting the work speak for itself. We didn’t want to clutter or overwhelm visitors with too much text and explanation. The downside is someone interested in the process and background of our work is only getting a sliver of the story. If you are interested in knowing more about our work, stay tuned because this is the first in a week long series of post about our most recent project, lifetokens.

lifetokens was officially launched last Friday (February 19th, 2010) and is already off to a wonderful start, receiving orders from all over the world in its first weekend. However the journey to that launch started several years ago when lifetokens owner, Jamie, had an idea. The idea swirled around in his head for years until finally the right moment came to see it through. In June 2009, Jamie asked me to join him for lunch to talk about a potential project. Excited about this very unique proposal, we got started soon after.

lifetokens is brand new so the first step of the project was to create its identity. Working closely with owner Jamie, we verbalized what lifetokens was to him and what it needed to become to be successful in his eyes. Words like ‘real’ and ‘emotion’ were noted, as were more concrete words like ‘mail’ and ‘bright’. Using his input, 4 concepts were developed and presented.

Concept One, The Token – Right off the bat, ‘the token’ concept was a clear favorite of ours. We liked using a ‘handwritten’ script to portray this idea of getting a real letter in the mail and the circular format of the logo was not only representative of the actual product but would also work well in the eventual branding of the product (on the mailer, on the website, etc). This concept was eventually decided against because it wasn’t strong enough for the image lifetokens needed. Something about it felt trendy and someone said it reminded them of a neon sign.

Concept Two, Overprint – The overprint concept came out of early conversations about how the tokens themselves could be designed. We had this idea to color code emotions and use this color code to overlap emotions into more complex messages. The color coded emotion thing never took off, and thus this logo never made sense as the face of lifetokens.

Concept Three, Macaroni Man – In many of our early meetings with Jamie about the identity, one idea kept coming up as what he had always envisioned for the logo. A figure holding up a lifetoken. I didn’t hate this idea but I knew we were searching for a iconic logo so the figure would have to be very stylized. Thus Macaroni Man was born. He’s kind of cute, don’t you think?

Concept Four, The Envelope – The night before our concept presentation, I revisited some of the sketches that we had done over the past week and one really stood out. It was a mailbox with a token shooting out the front and it stood out not because I liked the sketch… the sketch was awful. It stood out because it showed a very important part of what lifetokens are. Real mail. That is where the envelope concept began. A quick logo was developed which would eventually become lifetokens’ identity. Jamie’s initial reaction to it was “It has a Legend of Zelda treasure chest feel to it”. I knew we had a winner.

Bad ideas – As with any logo project, there is also a lot of failure. It is always interesting to revisit these when you’re all done to reflect on the thought process. You can’t get to the good ideas until you get the bad ones out. Right?

Logo Evolution – Now that we had our concept, it was time to polish it into something we could be happy with and build upon. A few rounds of revisions, both internally and with Jamie would lead us to our final logo. We adjusted the shape of the envelope to be more recognizable and iconic. The amazing Darden Studio’s Omnes was used because it’s bold friendly characteristics fit our concept perfectly and the primary color palette evolved from a CMY to RGB as we began designing the actual tokens.

Final Logo – Looking back now it’s hard to imagine the lifetokens logo being anything else, and I think that is a sure sign of a successful process. One thing we learned from this phase of the project specifically was the value of involving a client every step of the way. We were lucky enough to have a client who wanted to be involved and it really shows in the final product.

Now that the logo was done, we felt the hard part was over. In a way we were right, but there were still many more problems to tackle over the coming months. Stay tuned.