Kleara

You may have seen the ITV documentary John and Joe: Life After Deaf where John Bishop tells the story of how his family came to terms with his son, Joe, becoming partially deaf after a particularly bad viral infection when he was a teenager. Offscreen, John and Joe had discussed how expensive hearing aids are and wondered how people who are less fortunate than them, who also have hearing problems, get the help and equipment they need. This conversation lead to the birth of Kleara, a company that provides a hearing test mobile app which then recommends the most suitable hearing aids for you.

The logo and brand

The company was originally called Hears, however, after getting more investors on board it became apparent that the name wasn’t very popular. This is where I came in, I was tasked with coming up with a new name and a logo to go with it. One of the issues with Hears was that it’s restricted to hearing, if the company ever wanted to diversify in the future the name may cause a problem. So, I thought of a name that’s still applicable to better hearing but could also be applied to other health improvement programmes – Kleara! Clearer with a ‘K’ and an ‘a’. This could be applied to clearer sight, clearer speech, a clearer mind, a whole suite of health improvement apps and programmes.

The new logo had to be relatively simple so it could adapt to other health elements while still relating to hearing. I think I successfully achieved this with a simple blue circle with white space around it which represents an ear and a blue lozenge wrapping around it like a hearing aid. This could be easily manipulated and animated to look like a blinking eye or a talking mouth.

The colour scheme chosen was inspired by clear blue skies which obviously ties in the clearer (or Kleara) theme. It’s also a calming, trustworthy and reassuring colour, which are all traits we wish to convey with the Kleara brand.

The Outcome

John and Joe love the brand identity and logo and the packaging mock-ups I created. Kleara is planned to launch at some point this year, I’ve been given the responsibility to design and build the website and I’ll be heavily involved in the UX & UI design of the app, making sure the developers have strong brand guidelines to adhere to.