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Know what we at JOI love almost as much as clean ingredients? Fresh, clean design--and that is exactly why we are *super* excited about our brand update!

As any good Insta influencer will tell you, aesthetics matter. Branding is about a lot more than picking a couple colors and fonts; it’s about first impressions, and we all know that those are the ones that matter most.

When JOI first started out, we were all about the ‘Just One Ingredient’ acronym. We had a single, super simple way to make super fresh almond milk, and we wanted our brand to reflect that minimalist philosophy. Since then, we’ve spread our wings with our cashew, hazelnut creamer, and oat powder bases (and we’re just getting started!). We’ve also realized that JOI plant bases are great for so much more than plant milk - they’re a pantry super-staple that’s great for all kinds of cooking and baking. We’ve moved beyond minimalism, and we want our brand to reflect that fun and creativity.

What Goes In To Rebranding?

A core challenge for any brand, including JOI, is aligning our own ideas about who we are and what we do with how our users actually perceive us. We could come up with incredible branding concepts, but if they don’t resonate with how our customers think about us, they’re just pretty pictures. That’s why we made customer feedback step one of our rebranding effort. We spent the summer interviewing our real life customers to understand how they’re using JOI, what they like about it, what they dislike, and what they want more of. This rebranding isn’t just about JOI--it’s about JOI users.  

Want to know what one of the toughest things about brand design is? It’s really emotional! Yes, we’re customer-obsessed, but we do this because we’re passionate about JOI ourselves! And we want our brand to reflect us--as a company, as a group of individuals, and as a collection of products. It can be hard to stay objective through all that! That’s why we enlisted the expertise of a branding and packaging agency, Herefor, to help us through the process and create a new look and feel that we love just as much as our customers do. 

These rockstar designers and wordsmiths worked closely with our Chief of Brand, Izzy, to get to know who we are at JOI, why we do what we do, and where we want to go next. They took that story, all of the customer feedback we gathered, and the market research we did, and collaborated with us to turn it into visuals that we are so excited about. 

“Our inspiration for the system stemmed from the unmatched credentials their product lines have to offer and, of course, their brand name,” Herefor’s designers shared. “The new design – while clean and organized to ensure easy shopability and product understanding – is meant to deliver on the emotion of joy from start to finish and as part of that, inspire our consumer to use JOI in countless ways. We landed on a vibrant color palette, playful illustration and icon style, and ownable brand mark that ultimately brings more joy to JOI.”

Ultimately, it took lots of conversations, lots of consumer testing, lots of iteration, and plenty of scrapped ideas, but we are so happy with where we landed. Rebranding is never a snap decision, and it’s never all the glamorous fun stuff, but that’s the process--and it’s what Izzy and her fellow branding and marketing gurus live for!  

In fact, they did such a bang up job that JOI's look has been recognized with a design award!

Refocusing on Sustainability

We made a big switch from plastic to glass containers for our almond, cashew, and hazelnut plant base products, and our newest addition to the JOI family, instant oat, is packaged in durable post-consumer recycled material. We’re super pumped about both of these announcements because they’re near and dear to our sustainability values. 

We’ve also heard loud and clear from our customers that sustainable, reusable packaging is high priority--and delighting customers is, after all, our favorite pastime. Rolling out the new JOI brand look-and-feel at the same time as our awesome new eco-friendly packaging is a natural fit (and kinda makes it feel like our holiday season and birthday presents all showed up early and at the same time this year--we’re not complaining).  

JOI for the Future

The JOI team is all about growth. We’re all crazy passionate about growing this company, our line of plant-based products, and our commitments to sustainability. We took on this rebranding project because we want JOI to reflect all of the growth that’s already happened over our first 5 years, and set us up for all of the exciting things ahead. This fresh new look and feel--which we’ll be phasing in with new orders over the coming weeks--will keep growing with us as we continue to get more creative with new products, partnerships, recipes, and ways to buy JOI (those bright new colors sure would look nice on grocery store shelves, right?). JOI has brought us a ton of joy--we hope our new branding shows it, and brings some to you too!

Ready to see the new look of JOI for yourself? Shop our almond, cashew, hazelnut, and oat plant bases and have JOI delivered IRL, right to your doorstep!