The process of growing vegetables with an aeroponics machine can seem daunting to some and too technological for others. The product creators wanted to have a brand that wouldn't galvanize potential users, but rather invite all city-dwellers to live in a more sustainable way, finding in Grobud the perfect companion to do so.

In order to communicate values like friendliness, natural, and low-risk I explored organic shapes reminiscent of soil and stems. For the name I created a word formed by grow and buddy, effectively transmit the core values of the product, but when spoken out loud sound like robot reminding that this is still a tech product.

While I was defining the logo, different ideas for the look of the supporting graphics became clear. Illustrations for the veggies seemed like the correct way to go. I scrapped clean minimalistic illustrations or high-res perfect photographed veggies, for grainy "covered-in-soil" type of textures reinforcing the idea that this is a product that will produce real food.

The brand came alive organically – no pun intended. The name and logo shapes allowed themselves to be paired with light-hearted and cheeky statements, and through these statements I found the voice of the brand.

There was no information available on how the process from "seed to harvest" works. So, onboarding screens or beginner's instructions were not a possibility. Instead a simple set of flows for initiated users was designed and with it high-fidelity visuals for the mobile application that connects to the aeroponic growing machine.

These flows cover crucial actions taken inside the app, like:

• selecting what to grow next from the home view
• using the nuanced controls inside the growing settings screen

• using bookmarked settings to grow a crop

Two prototypes were created to demonstrate how the technical aspects of growing a crop can be married with the less-technical brand language.