Welcome to the New Storyware

When we founded Storyware six years ago, we rushed to create our new brand. Sometimes you have to do that when you’re starting up.

While it got the job done, over time we realized that our brand lacked true focus and consistency. A redesign of our website was also in our sights, but we couldn’t devote our full attention to it until this year. Thankfully, this combination of needs prompted a greater opportunity to rebuild the entire brand, which allowed us to remedy the issues from the past.

We rebuilt Storyware from the ground up by evaluating—and in some cases—redefining our mission, vision, and core values. This allowed us to recreate the company guided by these principles.

Our Mission

Our mission statement has always been a bit vague, with several different versions in use. We evaluated this history, landing on a new mission statement that reflects both our past and our present.

To empower our customers with creative solutions and thoughtful design.

Our Vision

We’ve never had a clear vision statement, which is an aspirational statement outlining what we want Storyware to be. Deep down, I know what I have always wanted us to become, but I never did a great job communicating it.

To build products and partnerships with care. To educate, engage and support our community. To provide a great place to work.

Our Core Values

I’ve tried to practice certain core values in my management and operation of Storyware. Yet, I never openly informed past and present teammates what these core values are. Thankfully, we’ve built a team that reflects these same core values. So when the time came to identify these, there was little disagreement.

• Stay honest

• Empower others

• Build connections

• Do everything with care

• Communicate, communicate, communicate

Our Personality

If you don’t work in branding, it can seem silly or odd to define a brand personality, but it’s just as important as your mission, vision, and core values. A brand personality should speak to your customers’ desires. Thus, it should define how a brand speaks, behaves, thinks, acts and reacts. Moving forward, Storyware strives to be a:

mentor and a creator: knowledgeable, trustworthy and driven to create something of enduring value

Onward and Upward

It was a team effort to rebuild Storyware, beginning with Kate Hofstra who led and ultimately defined our brand strategy. Kate was perfect for the role. Not only does she have years of experience helping organizations define their brand strategy, but she started working for Storyware in 2015 so she knew our history.

About the time that Kate wrapped up our brand strategy, we hired Megan Chandler as our new designer and digital strategist. Megan’s first big project was designing the new visual identity for Storyware. Talk about pressure! Well, she knocked it out of the park, and I couldn’t be more proud of the results. Megan plans to write a few blog posts about the entire process, so look out for those soon!

Last, but certainly not least, this project would not have been complete if it wasn’t for my business partner and our CTO, Page Wood. Page was involved in every facet of the project, wearing multiple hats and juggling various roles. As a partner, he had to play the customer role, but he also served as our UX consultant and web developer.

Welcome to the new Storyware.