Spellbook

The strategic work began with us mapping what the legal AI landscape actually looked like and what it consistently failed to do. Competitors read as a single undifferentiated field: cool blues, product-heavy imagery, and neutral type choices that signaled competence without conviction.

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We worked with their team to arrive at their brand attributes, one of which included — suitably — magic. The final brand concept was “Questing Together.” 

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The concept positions Spellbook not as a replacement for the transactional lawyer but as the thing that makes them more powerful on their journey. That framing gave every subsequent design decision a clear mandate: beyond polished and professional; worthy of the quest.

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Throughout the project, Grace Walker — a UI designer working with Spellbook simultaneously — built the website interface while Focus Lab developed the brand, with both tracks informing each other and collaborating in weekly sessions. The result was a brand system and a UI that grew up together rather than in sequence. Grace later joined Spellbook full-time as creative director, a reflection of how seriously the company invested in getting the identity right from the start.

Although we initially explored ideas that leaned into the "book" of Spellbook, elevating the gem from their previous identity proved to be the right solution. It retired what felt complex and generic while honoring what the mark had always represented.

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The gem is the centerpiece of the final identity. The faceted stone ties directly to the brand concept — a magical object that makes the work feel less like a grind and more like a craft. Grounded in the prior logo's equity and refined into something sharper and more intentional, the mark signals both continuity and arrival.

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The wordmark is set in Ghost by Sharp Type, the same typeface family that runs through the broader brand system.

The primary palette, a near-black called Obsidian paired with clean white, reads as warm and premium in a space that rarely is. A six-color secondary palette extends the system’s range with names that carry the alchemical vocabulary of the brand concept and give the identity an expressive depth.

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The primary typeface, Dianmo’s Arizona Mix, is a contemporary serif — distinguished without being cold. Ghost, the secondary typeface, carries over from the logotype.

Among the most ownable elements in the system is the markup symbols library — a set of graphic elements drawn from the traditional visual language of contract annotation. Curls, brackets, carets: the shorthand that lawyers have used for generations to mark up a page, translated into brand assets. They function as background textures, product icons, and graphic language, rendered across the full color palette with bold, expressive line work. They are the spells in the book, made visible.