Case Study
Cortex Futura — Course and Identity Design for Tangible Business Results
Uptick.Studio rebranded Cortex Futura, creating a premium identity and course design system that boosted course sales, audience growth, and provided a strong foundation for future scalability.
Featuring insights from
Martin
Founder, Uptick Studio
Problem
Cortex Futura needed a premium identity and learning experience that matched the depth of its Tana coursework ahead of a major relaunch.
Approach
Translated founder Lukas Kawerau’s thinking frameworks into a cohesive brand system, modular course templates, and supportive marketing collateral.
Outcomes
- Recognizable knowledge-brand system informed by topographic motifs tied to networked thinking.
- Ready-to-use course and presentation toolkit that keeps future content on brand.
- Clearer market positioning credited with accelerating social and email audience growth.
The Brief:
Lukas of Cortex Futura had seen a great amount of success from his early content and course creation efforts and was gearing up for taking it even more seriously. To feel equipped to expand and take on more students a brand a course overhaul had to be performed ahead of the big relaunch.
Before
Cortex Futura had a strong offering in the form of two flagship courses, but was looking to upgrade the look and feel. The owner Lukas needed to expand, get more students, and get a better look and feel, but was unsure how to get there.
Working with Uptick
Through collaboration with Uptick we discovered a new premium look and feel for his brand and a new way of presenting the value of his intellectual property. The new assets are rooted in a deep understanding of the target market and will serve both him and his students in the future.
After
Lukas is accelerating course sales and is serving more and more students with his beautiful content and solid digital courses. As the power of a recognizable brand takes effect he is seeing more Twitter followers, more email subscribers, and a solid base for his premium content.
“I had a rough idea of knowing what I wanted my material to communicate, but no way of making that concrete”
Results
Brand Identity Design
The first challenge was to create a new brand upon which the entire business would be re-launched. Through a deep understanding of the ideal customer we found a way to convey the key ideas of his niche space, summarized via a simple logomark.
The logo symbolizes the exponential power of a new way of thinking via Roam and the potential for interconnected ideas.
The new logo mark is designed for maximum simplicity and recognizability on social platforms like Twitter where the target market lives.
Also found in the brand design system is the topographic pattern symbolizing how the “idea landscape” is overlapping and ever evolving.
Course Design
To enable the rapid creation of on-brand content a presentation template with multiple color options was created. Depending on the individual course the theme color can change to reinforce the recognizability and contents of the given course. Special care to minimize time spent on crafting slides was made in order to help Lukas stay focused on what he does best: Teaching and imparting his extensive knowledge of tools of thought.
