Logo & Brand Refresh for a Yoga Teacher
Kaya Mindlin is a teacher, storyteller, and mother who invites students to integrate the ancient traditions of Yoga and the Vedas into their lives. She was ready to mark a shift in her teachings with a shift in her visual brand – and as a student of hers, I was thrilled to help! In this post we’ll take a peek into the process and understand the decisions that helped refresh her visuals to feel more aligned.
Kaya offers mystical and practical teachings of the Vedic tradition for longtime spiritual seekers, yoga teachers, and healing practitioners. Her programs and memberships invite students to deepen their spiritual paths and learn how to fully integrate these teachings into their daily lives as householders.
This project was such a pleasure to work on. Not only does Kaya have so much wisdom to offer, she is an embodied example of how to live out your values and purpose to the absolute fullest. Because her work is infused with so much meaning, she already had ideas for the visuals to incorporate – in fact, the meaning was already present in her previous brand, it just needed little tweaking and fine-tuning to mark a subtle shift for her teachings.
The Beginning
For the most part, Kaya’s brand colors, fonts, and logo had all been working for her, but she was feeling a change on the horizon. She wanted to mark this by refining her visuals, ensuring that what she communicated as a brand would be in complete alignment with the refined scope of the teachings she offered. Here’s a peek at what her brand was like before:
A good-looking brand on its own, but it no longer felt quite right. Let’s examine why.
Starting with Clarity
Like all of my branding projects, the first step was Brand Clarity. Kaya did some work on her own to complete my in-depth questionnaire before we hopped on a call to discuss and uncover even more. This is always a big step, but Kaya has such clarity on her work that it all came rather easy.
Once the call was finished, I took a few days to summarize our findings and to highlight the most relevant and important aspects of her brand. I gathered visual inspiration to complement the Pinterest board Kaya had already started, and put it all together into a Clarity Document. (For a brand refresh – rather than a full Signature Brand – the Clarity Document is more of a Creative Brief. Rather than create a brand from scratch, it focuses on the things about the current brand that are no longer working need to shift.)
A Refreshed Feeling for the Brand
The main thing that came out of the Brand Clarity phase was that the current brand felt too soft and tender. Kaya was ready for more fiery transformation, and to incorporate more “fierce motherly love” into her offerings and teaching style. The previous iteration of her brand was a bit too soft with colors, and she wanted to move away from that baby pink sweetness. Her brand typography (that is, the fonts and how they are used) also felt a little too generic and didn’t have the fiery touch we wanted to incorporate.
We determined the vibe of the brand needed to feel natural, sensual, and luminous. Natural because all of Kaya’s teachings lead to the seeker uncovering their own nature, removing all that is discordant and obstructs the reality of their existence. For her brand, this meant a palette of colors that can be found in nature and simple, organic shapes. To reflect the intensity of the fiery, feminine divine, Kaya wanted her brand to feel sensual. That meant texture and some deeper hues of reds, pinks, and mauves. And finally, the brand needed to feel luminous in a way that represented the lustre and shine of Lakshmi, a Vedic figure with great meaning to Kaya.
Maintaining the Meaning of the Logo
Kaya’s original logo has generally been working but was feeling too soft and light (that overly sweet feeling), and it needed to capture the sensual, fiery vibe we were going for. But the concept was there and was actually quite infused with meaning, so a lot of the elements needed to remain. Here’s her previous logo:
The logo is based on the system of Vastu, which is a form of sacred architecture and geometry in the Vedic tradition. The downward pointing triangle, the circular frame, and even the overall rectangular ratio of the logo were infused with sacred geometry and specific meaning. Mostly, it was the colors and the fonts used in the logo that needed to shift.
A Goal to Keep Us Aligned
Through this Clarity work, we came up with a Brand Goal to keep us on track through the entire process. The Brand Goal acts as a gut-check: anytime I considered whether a particular design decision is right for the brand, I referred to the Brand Goal.
Brand GoalA natural, sensual, and luminous brand refresh that evokes a deep sense of connection to the integrated system of Yoga and Vedic traditions.
Exploration & Design
Once the Clarity Document was approved, it was time to move onto design! Whether it’s a simple Brand Refresh or a full-on Signature Brand, the bulk of my time is spent here. I try out all kinds of ideas, putting them each into context through mock-ups to see how all the individual elements come together to form a cohesive brand system.
There are so many options for each brand but at the end of the day, there’s usually one idea that stands out among all the others. But it takes a lot of experimentation to get there – just take a look at my artboards!
The Refresh
After all the clarity work, design exploration, and just a little tweaking, we landed on something that meets the Brand Goal and perfectly captures the natural, sensual, and luminous vibe we wanted. The logo maintains the Vastu-based shape and the sacred symbology but uses a more elegant combination of fonts. The colors feature rich tones of red and pink, balanced nicely with the watery blues and teals, and of course the earthy gold that was so crucial. Here’s how it all came together through some mockups for her website and social media:
Along with all the files ready to use in their Brand Toolkit, each and every client gets a printable style sheet so they can easily reference their fonts, brand colors, and other elements as they use their brand.
All of these elements come together so nicely to create something that I think is truly gorgeous – and of course, incorporate more depth and fiery femininity. Kaya’s new brand will help her share her wisdom and her message on her website and in her teaching programs, and it’ll help her brand stay consistent and look gorgeous on social media, email newsletter, and so much more. I can’t wait to see where this brand takes her!
You can explore Kaya’s teachings and see her brand in action on her website, yogawithkaya.com.
