BeyondWords
Frictionless text-to-speech publishing
BeyondWords
Frictionless text-to-speech publishing
BeyondWords
Frictionless text-to-speech publishing
BeyondWords
Frictionless text-to-speech publishing
Co-founders
James MacLeod,
Patrick O'Flaherty
We partenered on:
Naming
Visual Identity
Web Design
Animation
Nicolai Blix
Design support
George Rowson
The company
BeyondWords is a London-based technology company that is revolutionising text-to-speech conversion for publishers and developers using AI technology.
The problem
The company felt they had outgrown their original name (SpeechKit) and identity, and required a brand overhaul - a new name, visual identity and website.
The process
The project began with a rigorous naming development. With customer engagement and attention declining when it comes to written word, the team decided upon the name ‘BeyondWords’. It’s a positive and aspirational name that implies a future that has advanced beyond written text.
The brand identity process took inspiration from BeyondWords’ product and the intersection of writing, code and audio that come together to create unique AI voices.
After a deep-dive into studies of sound, we were inspired by a process called Cymatics, where sounds can be visualised in a limitless amount of beautiful shapes called resonance patterns. Every sound and vibration has a pattern that is unique to its frequency, and as the tone changes, so does the pattern (play example).These patterns speak directly to BeyondWords vision that publishers can create and customise their own unique voice, to engage audiences in a sound that resonates with them.
A set of dynamic patterns were created, brought to life through colour and animation. Two colours were used to signify the two major elements of BeyondWords technology (writing and code) while the third element (audio) was depicted through animation to illustrate the flow of speech.
The result
The result is an eye-catching and bold identity, setting BeyondWords apart from its competitors and inspiring publishers and developers to use synthetic voices.
Part of the challenge was to apply the new identity to a pre-existing dashboard, an area where BeyondWords users create and manage their audio content. A refreshed colour and typographic system was applied to modernise the aesthetic and improve the user experience.