Substack Brand

Substack is an online platform that connects writers and their readers directly through subscription. The platform aims to provide a better writing and reading environment through paid subscription, a different business model than advertisement, where readers pay directly for publications they love. Writers are freed up from the click-based writing style, being able to write without many constraints or worries by the support of their readers. Readers also have control over what they read instead of being fed by algorithm-based content feed.

No color is bad color 

We develop the color pallete with one premise: not changing the color orange which has been adopted since the company was founded. The strong orange works well as CTA, but could be limited when applying to a broader illustration system. The project starts with finding complimentary colors that work well with the orange.

In terms of business model, the company is innovative and aggresive; In terms of vision, the company is vintage and calm, with the goal to bring back the good old days of the early Internet before social media becoming mainstream. To bridge two opposite concepts together, we adopt a more vintage and saturated color pallete, applying it to a style that contains high contrast in shapes. 

Substack Brand

Brand Direction & Illustration│Joro Chen
Product Design│Gabriel Birnbaum, Alex Cornell