The Verbal+Visual brand refinement
by Anshey Bhatia, Founder + CEO at Verbal+Visual
I grew up in an entrepreneurial household, and in the mid-90’s my parents were operating two retail businesses: an educational toy store and a Bang & Olufsen store in local malls. Nearly every day after school, I would be at one of the stores, and despite the vastly different product selection in each store, I noticed one comment trait with all customers: they bought with their heart first, and rationalized their intended purchases with their head second.
While this fascination with customer behavior was developing, I also found myself drawn to this wild and crazy place called the internet. I was into the arts, which led me to design, and before I knew it, I found myself designing e-commerce websites for my parents businesses.
This first iteration of Verbal+Visual way back in the 90’s feels like a lifetime ago, but the principles learned and passions developed burn brighter than ever today.
Officially established in 2009, Verbal+Visual exists to create and foster emotional connection within the e-commerce space. If people buy with their hearts first, how do we bring the human aspects that make customers truly love the brands they buy from?
Connection is at the heart of everything we do.
While Verbal+Visual has been around for 15+ years, we’ve gone through a number of iterations during that time. Coming into 2024, following such huge market fluctuations during Covid, it felt like a fresh beginning, and a moment in time that we wanted to capture in our refined brand and path forward.
With that, we started the year with a verbal exploration of all things V+V. Who are we, what do we stand for, and why are we so passionate about the work that we do.
Our executive team really took to this opportunity, exploring the depths of their own motivations here at V+V and how we wanted to communicate those intentions to the world. The verbal and visual output on this new site is a reflection of that inspiration and desire to enrich customer’s lives through the process of purchasing a product you truly love and value.
In focusing on these outcomes, the word ‘connection’ kept coming up in our conversations, and ultimately became the hero word that we now identify all parts of our business with.
Connection is the single idea at the foundation of our verbal and visual identity.
Connection means creating experiences that build relationships between customers and brands.
Connection means being true partners to our clients and our employees.
Connection means using novel and creative solutions to drive interaction and conversion.
Connection means actively leading and participating in the design world at large.
Connection means using strategy, design, and technology to elevate our client’s brand experience.
In sum, Verbal+Visual equals connection.
The visual evolution
Once we felt confident in our verbal direction, it was time to explore the visual manifestation of the brand. The idea of connection as the hero coupled with inspiring customers to think beyond a prototypical e-commerce process and imagine new ways to interact with brands that still convert led us right back to purple as our core palette color.
We fell in love with purple all over again, and coupled this primary color with stark white and soft cream on the lighter side, and a muted navy and midnight on the darker side.
The combination of this palette along with both a classic yet refreshed core typeface of Neue Haas Grotesk Display Pro as our ultra-readable typeface, and Victor Serif in italics as the more human, organic typeface felt like the right combination of clarity and connection.
We also really wanted to lean into our name Verbal+Visual in this redesign process, and into the idea that verbal expression can be equally as powerful as visual expression. By utilizing the serif + italic typeface at key inflection points in a viewers verbal journey, along with the purple color in key interaction moments, we achieved a harmony between verbal and visual in our refined brand that reflects our spirit.
Lastly, to add a bit of playfulness into the site, we’ve included some easter eggs such as a light mode / dark mode toggle and a full page purple background takeover on our culture page. These subtle, sophisticated touches provide viewers with moments of delight along the way.
Again and again, the idea of connection, of push and pull, and of coming together, all came to the foreground during our brand evolution.
Our new brand evolution has established a scalable framework for us to build off of for the next chapter of Verbal+Visual, and we are beyond thrilled with this launch. It speaks to our ethos and our mission to design digital commerce experiences where every interaction creates meaningful connection for the consumer.
Verbal+Visual: Commerce that converts.