Stylus

DEVELOPING WHAT’S NEXT FOR LEADING FUTURISTS

Architecting a future-first platform for a leading source of trends intelligence

The Challenge

A leading intelligence agency looking past the now, Stylus are a family-owned business that uncovers trends, data and insights to connect the dots for forward-thinking brands, strategists and entrepreneurs.

They work across culture, business and design, becoming a sixth sense for businesses at crucial crossroads in curious and rapid markets. Unsurprisingly, Stylus is highly respected among its clients, already trusted by hundreds of the world’s leading brands, agencies and businesses. But they’re an ambitious lot. Wanting to be recognised in the industry beyond established clientele, to have a reach that stretches to the very edges of industry and help to build better futures wherever they can.

As Stylus’ key product offering, their vast catalogue of content deserved an elevated platform that did their intelligence work justice – balancing an easy-editorial style read with dynamic digital features. The original members' interface had become out-of-date and fell short of competitors, falling ironically behind the times for a team of futurists. Stylus needed a new platform to match their intent, developed with tech that can flex to business needs, enabling growth and sustaining esteem – whilst seeing an increase in membership renewal.

Across an 18-month project, Matter Of Form delivered a full redesign and new platform, providing Stylus with a new foundation to grow from under-the-radar into a league of their own, where membership is coveted by strategists across every vertical.

A Membership Platform Built for Growth

Stylus needed to invest in a system that would carry them for the next 5 years, whilst allowing for new features and benefits for paid members.

We went back to the drawing board, to reimagine Stylus’ central platform and create a new foundation for their member-exclusive content to be discovered, absorbed and applied. Our team looked to understand business and consumer needs through an extensive series of interviews with various Stylus stakeholders and members. Users were looking for easy-to-digest inspiration through a clean, comprehensive and highly visual layout. We prioritised insights into a set of features we then designed and developed, ultimately creating an efficient interface that’s a joy to use - including an intelligent search function.

We completely re-architectured their digital experience; upgrading their systems and tech to house a vast portfolio of information that would only continue to grow. Migrating over 10,000 reports, videos, podcasts and webinars onto the new platform, we implemented new features for users to easily capture and save any type of content (text, imagery, video) as well as redesigning pre-existing ones that long-standing members found valuable like Stylus’ colour library and stat bank.

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Future-Proofing for Future Forecasters

For a digital experience to be great, it has to spark joy. No matter how beautifully a platform functions, the brand must be distinctive enough to lend itself to a captivating visual language and infrastructure – across every interaction. With Stylus’ new platform, the brand needed a visual refresh to reflect their cutting-edge stance. Alongside the Stylus team, we brought to life their new identity across their digital touchpoints.

To accompany the new membership portal, we designed a bold website for Stylus to attract prospects, teasing content and ease of digital experience through example reports alongside written insight and imagery of what’s behind the paywall. The website now acts as a strong lead generation and conversion tool, showcasing the prowess of the platform and its practicalities. Paired with the revamped members’ platform, Stylus’ digital experience is exponentially more distinctive and a cut above the rest within its category.

3 smart phones with branded images displayed, against a pale purple background