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Yomela which stands for Yoga, Meditation, Lebensfreude & Achtsamkeit is a warm-hearted, empowering and female-led online business based in Berlin, Germany. It all started with a lifestyle blog which quickly grew its subscriber base through promoting content on social media such as Pinterest where they had over 15k followers at that time. The founding team's deep desire to help people experience the positive impact of personal growth in life lead them to transform their blog into an e-commerce business. As a digital marketplace for personal development and happiness, Yomela aims at connecting consumers and qualified experts efficiently in order to make personal growth bigger in society.
After thoroughly reviewing the brand's story, voice and tone, I discovered that their narrative wasn't clear. Moreover, it appeared that they haven't fully identified what their customers want, what problem they are trying to solve for them, and what life will look like after customers engage with their products and services. Hence, a rebranding was pivotal in order to become a bolder and more inspiring player in the personal development industry. As the business will dominantly operate online - through their website and socials - the goal of this project was to establish a clean and feminine-oriented visual identity with a cohesive digital appearance. For this, I collaborated with another freelance UX designer following the Design Thinking framework.
Moving forward, I analyzed both direct and indirect competitors in their market segment. I also researched Yomela's followers to better empathize with the customers and their pain points. Derived from my research, I created the main persona and brand story. Yomela primarily targets a feminine audience. The cluster includes women between the ages of 30 and 40 with a medium to high income. More precisely, Yomela aims at those that feel lost and lonely with the deep desire of growing personally and living a truly fulfilled and happy life.
The concept plays on warm tones and boho elements to create a modern, yet minimal look. With a very feminine appearance, this concept perfectly represents Yomela and appeals to its desired target audience. The colors follow an ochre - terracotta palette. Warm and friendly, they create a positive and empowering atmosphere complimenting Yomela’s tagline that life is beautiful.
The primary logo consists solely of the brand type for which we chose a san serif typeface. San serif typefaces are a great choice for young startups, such as Yomela, that pursue a straightforward and clean look and feel. Through using all capital letters, we added a touch of boldness to it. As Yomela also aims at bringing people together virtually, such as through a blog, it became vital to integrate the aspect of relationship and community into the logo as well. Hence, I added a connection between the letters "L" and "A". Further, I drew various brush strokes in Procreate. Some of them we applied to the logo as alternative accents. The other idea was that they could also be incorporated as an illustrative accent on their website. With that being said and done, Yomela was reborn - fresher and stronger than it has ever been.
Midway through the project, I teamed up with Miriam who was working on all UX topics for the Yomela online shop. We exchanged our research findings, talked about the user stories, task flow and the sitemap she was responsible for. Further, I introduced her to the established brand guidelines which laid the visual and emotional foundation for the soon to be built website. The frequent collaboration with the founders, Ariadne and Marie, ensured transparency and minimized the risk of potential misunderstandings.
Next, we synthezised our gathered information and started the ideation process where lots of design directions were in circulation. Afterward, we decided which of the designs are most desirable, viable and feasible so Miriam could turn our pen and paper wireframes into a low-fidelity prototype. Once she finished, I hopped on to take charge of the visual design and communication. Furthermore, I wrote the design specifications and essentially tested the prototype before departing from this project. Due to the company's tight budget, I unfortunately couldn't assist Miriam in the final testing and potential iteration phase. Below you see the last status of the desktop designs I created.
Yomela turned out to be my first experience with an e-commerce business that would offer a small range of products and services online. The complications of e-commerce are definitely unique. When done right users don’t even notice how complex things are behind the scene. However, over that past three months I’ve gained a new level of respect for brands that do e-commerce well. I'm also glad I got to collaborate with another experienced UX designer during this project. The founders Ariadne and Marie were super welcoming and down-to-earth so I didn't feel like an external but rather part of a team. Overall, it was such a fun and great experience working with the young Berlin based startup, Yomela.
