Scope
Brand
Content
About
Eko set out to make a new kind of file: something that carries its own behaviour rather than sitting inert until an application opens it. Our job was to make an abstract idea concrete enough to explain in a single screen.
Concept
We designed the file before we designed the brand. Giving the format a shape, a weight and a way of opening meant everything afterwards, the mark, the product, the site, could refer to an object people could picture.
Format
The object is drawn as a plane with depth, so it reads as a single thing that has more inside it than its surface shows. That one drawing does most of the explaining the product used to need a paragraph for.
System
From the object came the rest: corner geometry, layering rules, and a way of showing state by how far the thing is opened. Nothing in the identity is decorative; every piece describes some property of the format.
Application
In the product the same object is the unit of interface. Files stack, nest and open with the same physics everywhere they appear, which makes an unfamiliar format behave predictably from the first use.
End
Eko ended up with an idea people can hold, which is most of the work when the product is a standard.
Credits