Playbound: Branding the future of play.
During my time at Stratos, one of the bigger briefs was naming and branding their new augmented reality arm. AR is often described as the bridge between digital and real, but that’s underselling it. It’s a playground for imagination: face filters, body-tracked games, magic mirrors. It’s weird, wonderful and a little bit wild.
To start, I sat down with founder Sam Guilmard to unpick what AR really meant to him. One word kept resurfacing: play. Play with your face, your hands, your whole body. Interact, move, explore. That’s where the name Playbound came from, boundless in possibility, playful by nature.
From there, the identity began to build itself. A 3D pixelated face became the icon, simple but expressive, able to morph and shift materials. Just like AR, it adapts, surprises and breaks expectations.
The brand grew from name and icon into a full identity system: guidelines, website, social launch, animations and sales decks. Structured where needed, free where it counts.
It’s still evolving. That’s the point.
Project type: Brand creation
Industry: Augmented reality
Services: Strategy / Naming / Branding / Copywriting / Social / Web design
The teaser campaign was simple: say enough to get people interested, say so little they need to find out. Which is exactly what I did, creating posters that gave a piece of the brand away, be it a logo on repeat, amidst the street art, or a QR code which revealed a little taste of what Playbound can achieve through the art of augmented reality.
Small welcome packs for every new client continued the fun nature of Playbound, and made every project start a little more special.
