The Regulated Edge

In 2017 my agency Fades to Nothing was contracted by JUUL to design the next generation vapor product. What we didn't know was that they had run the same brief in parallel with several established agencies. When the project came to a close, the founders chose our work. In 2018, when the design was ready to move into manufacturing, they asked us to come in-house to ship it. The design lineage made it a natural move: I'd done work for Ploom, Pax, and now JUUL. The products had been part of my life for several years.

I came in expecting to pick up where we left off and lead product design. What I found instead was a marketing function that needed structural correction more urgently than the product team needed leadership. Before my time, JUUL had been operating from a playbook that worked for its sister brand Pax in the cannabis category. The category JUUL was actually in—FDA-regulated nicotine, with the full apparatus of public health and economic scrutiny that comes with it—required a different discipline than the one the company was practicing. The pressure on the brand was already rising. The work was the correction.

I moved into Marketing and started auditing. The audit produced an extensive list. Rebuild the JUUL brand identity to a standard that would pass regulatory review in every country the company shipped. Separate the corporate parent, Juul Labs, Inc., from the product brand, so that the company structure could carry future products. Design a proprietary typeface that would eliminate tens of millions in trademark exposure. Build a creative function that could produce trade and packaging output at the volume the global business required. Contribute to the PMTA submission to FDA. Every one of those was a foundational project.

I built the strategy and core identity system in partnership with Bibliothèque. We then extended it across regions using our in-house teams. The system was compliant with restrictions in every market JUUL operated in, which is not a constraint most brand design systems need to uphold. The typeface was a separate project with Colophon Foundry that ran in parallel. The split between Juul Labs, Inc. and JUUL had been discussed at the company before my time. I formalized it with leadership, and executed it in market. The parent entity gave the company the legal and operational standing to absorb risk that would otherwise have attached to the product brand directly.