Books have been around for centuries. The Gutenberg Bible, commonly accepted to be the world’s oldest mechanically printed book, was printed in the 15th century! But since then, have we really innovated books? More than just from papyrus to pixels? Moreover, there has never been a time in the world with more abundant resources and content to learn new skills and ideas, but what’s the last online course you signed up for, that you completed?
Graphy is a new medium to discover, absorb and share ideas, a new medium for a generation that isn’t engaged by books but isn’t learning much out of today’s clickbait. Graphy offers an interactive and immersive alternative to the status quo. Users can freely explore new ideas through immersive storytelling augmented with video, audio, images, and quizzes, in an easy-to-consume chapter format.
Creators (known as Graphers), are industry leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, authors, and sports coaches, from across the globe curating their best lessons, ideas, and experiences. Whether that expertise is best shared as literature, animation or film, it all lives comfortably on Graphy.
Through rapid prototyping and working in close collaboration with DesignStudio, rather than as agency and client, we codified and designed the format of ‘Graphies’. Graphy's meaningful difference was to ‘Bring life to ideas’. This strategy steered everything about the core user experience – from brand and product strategy.
Visually, our creative system was designed around the ‘thread of an idea’, an exploration of how it weaves across and through every touchpoint of the Graphy experience. Navigation, interactions, visuals, across web and mobile reflected Graphy as the rabbit hole worth falling down. Furthermore, the Graphy mark, line motif and pattern palette hypnotically draw people into stories with substance.
Apart from our brand language as Graphy, as we went along iterating and improving the user experience, we discovered that creators on the platform should have their own visual voice to share their weird and wonderful ideas. A one-size-fits-all brand would not work for a platform and product championing creators and their content.
To execute this, we designed a series of guiding principles and visuals for Graphers to put together their own Graphies, cover art and promotional material. We led this effort from the front, setting the bar of quality high by designing the narratives, visuals and motion for several Graphy Originals, graphies conceived, produced and directed in-house.
The Graphy app was very well-received by users and creators for being engaging, immersive and having great attention to detail in design.
Through our learnings and insights from building Graphy, the product and business eventually evolved to become a creator-first, cohort-based course platform. Cohort-based courses (or CBCs), refers to a group of learners who join an online course together and then move through it at the same pace. The instructor provides expertise, structure and guidance, but much of the learning happens peer-to-peer, as students share what they’re discovering in real-time and encourage each other to keep going.
This final avatar of Graphy takes a spin on a format we’re already familiar with, from kindergarten to grad school – learning alongside peers, with real-time interaction, under the guidance of a teacher. This new format optimises for community, accountability, interactivity and impact.
As a creator on the platform, Graphy now allows you to grow your audience, monetise your skills and expertise, host live classes and iterate and improve your course throughout. Creators can build their online brand and manage their courses on a single platform, with all the tools needed to successfully to run their online school.
Video credits: ‘Welcome to the all-new Graphy’ was created by Sheryl John and Mohan Krishna of the Graphy design team. ‘Graphy brand reveal’ was created by DesignStudio. ‘Graphy onboarding flow’ was created by Roshnara Anwar of the Graphy design team.
