Speks
When I joined the Speks team, I was handed a small box of 2.5mm magnetic balls and told, “Make us stand out.” At just a few millimeters in diameter, these tiny spheres could be molded into geometric shapes the size of a quarter. But how do you turn something so minuscule into a big brand statement?
I started by immersing myself in the product—literally playing with the magnets for hours. My goal was to discover the sensations and sounds that made Speks so addictive. Those small *clicks* and the mesmerizing pull of the magnets were pure delight; I knew I had to capture that feeling in every brand touchpoint.
But it wasn’t just about having fun. As the brand’s art director and creative lead for almost 3 years, I had to grow online awareness and build a personality customers could latch onto. The first challenge was figuring out how to visually showcase these tiny beads in a way that popped on social feeds. That’s when I developed our brand personality checklist:
Exude a mature-but-playful vibe.
Be undeniably fun, bold, and irreverent.
Feel “scroll-stopping”—sparking curiosity in just a split second.
Capture the product’s hypnotic and satisfying qualities.
From there, our brand world came to life. I designed matte, color-blocked desk scenes where metallic magnet shapes caught the eye. Tutorials featured extreme close-ups, emphasizing the colourful constructs and magnetic click sounds. Social posts highlighted the endless ways to stack, snap, and satisfy your restless hands. It wasn’t long before we saw real traction: the social following skyrocketed from under 3,000 to over 30,000 in a year, eventually hitting 70,000 after I established the signature look and feel.
On top of daily content creation, I led new product naming and launches—crafting clever copy, designing video ads, and plotting email campaigns in Klaviyo. Meanwhile, managing my time in Asana with Slack serving as my command center for coordinating feedback with product designers and sales teams. The insights we gathered from social engagement even guided our R&D efforts on new color combos, proving that a deep connection with the community could drive product innovation.
Trade show booths, brochures, and shipping boxes all carried that same irreverent-yet-polished style, thanks to an evolving brand style guide I codified. If you walked into a Speks booth at a convention, you’d feel the same energy you saw online—electric colors, playful messaging, and a promise of endless fidget fun.
By the end of my tenure, I’d set the standard for how Speks showed up in the world: consistent, distinctive, and always ready to enthrall a curious passerby. The metrics spoke for themselves—substantial social growth, surging email open rates, and a community that found these tiny magnets utterly irresistible.
But for me, the real win was confirming that when you truly understand a product—its look, feel, and soul—you can craft a brand presence that speaks to people’s imaginations. It’s the spark that turns an inch-wide curiosity into a movement, one mesmerizing click at a time.
