BTBL

Puberty is hard. Bodies growing at different paces, relationships changing, adults forming. And then there is always that horribly gnawing self-consciousness that is only compounded with the scary microscope of social media.

Now add to that the pressure of going through all of this in a pair of swimmers.

That’s why Swimming Australia developed Beyond the Black Line, a program to support young swimmers who are navigating the journey of puberty and beyond. It aims to give advice to 12-18 year through videos, workshops and case studies as well as guide parents and coaches too. With teenagers as its primary focus, we needed to ensure the branding and web designs were genuinely relatable and engaging for young adults.

With only 1 week to turn around the concept, the inspiration was drawn from the obvious: pools!

The logo originated from an aerial view of a pool, combined with a clean typographic arrangement that represented the pool’s black lines. The pattern was generated by overlaying the initials BTBL with geometric shapes that resembled water movement. Then all that was needed was to add colours that pop and voila! An engaging brand tailored to teenagers.

We ran workshop sessions with key stakeholders, created proto-personas to get insights into their users and developed low-fidelity wireframes. This ensured the UI design was heavily influenced by the users’ emotions with an added splash of positivity and humour.

Since the launch of the project in November 2017, Beyond the Black Line has provided compelling video advice to over 1,600 young swimmers. In the first month, 84% of users returned to the website for longer periods of time – showing high engagement and plenty of pool-tential.