Just Exhale is lifestyle brand focused on the life-changing power of doing yoga … but without the shit-speration quotes, photos of clouds and mandalas. Just Exhale was born to fill a niche of people who use yoga to bring calmness to their otherwise hectic lives, but don’t feel the need to talk about it like a cult.
BRANDING
The client loved quickness and Scandinavian minimalism … things that don’t usually fit together, but I needed to find a way. The branding became a mixture of stark black and white, bright punchy colours (to avoid the usual category clichés) and most importantly texture. The texture represents the “slow-down” message of the namesake by incorporating real world time-consuming textures – stitches, cut paper or intricately hand drawn patterns … the idea is like looking at the results of meditative mindset.
Perhaps the most important part of this branding for the client was ‘no frilly crap’ … no scripty type, no clouds, no stupid inspiration quotes.
The paper animals are the mascots of Just Exhale, transforming from tense modern beings into chilled critters… they’re the visual representation of before and after states; showing the power of yoga, so it never needs to be said with a script quote over some clouds. The different critters have different appeal and show a range of people that yoga can benefit.
The Sloth: they’re not naturally into exercise, but they still stressed out.
The Workaholic Beaver: highly strung, putting work before they’re physical and mental health.
The Anxious Rabbit: the parent who worries about everything, they’re teetering on the edge at every moment.
MOTION
To show how the critters could show their transformation I created a little animation of the anxious rabbit learning to breathe deeply.
