Among Equals develops a new identity for the ready-to-eat brand Frive

Among Equals has collaborated with ready-to-eat food brand Frive on its new identity as it strives to improve the way we eat in the UK.

When the meal delivery service launched in 2016, it was called Lions Prep and aimed to compete with the prepared food delivery market. Naturally, its initial audience was gym-goers and fitness enthusiasts, as it offered healthy, quick and convenient meal options.

It wasn’t long before the brand became the UK’s highest-rated meal delivery subscription, thanks to its success as a health and fitness social media sensation and rave reviews from Vogue, GQ and Cosmopolitan.

The rebranding, which began late last year, came about when Lions Prep saw an opportunity to expand beyond the fitness industry and offer more people a new way to eat well. “We realized that to take our brand to the next level, we needed to embrace a proposition that works for millions of people who want to eat well and care for their holistic health, but don’t have the time to sacrifice convenience,” says company CEO George Taylor.

Preconceptions about this food category often lead consumers to think that quick and easy means ultra-processed and healthy means time-consuming, but Frive wanted to change that. Its new name was developed by the brand’s internal team and is an abbreviation of the phrase “food to flourish,” which sums up its guiding principle and slogan.

Taylor adds that Among Equals was “the obvious choice” to help Frive transition from the gym-goer niche to the mainstream market. Emily Jeffrey-Barrett, co-founder and creative director of Among Equals, said the idea was to make the brand accessible to as many people as possible, from busy nurses who work nights and need a healthy option to parents who want something quick and nutritious at the end of a hard day.

To communicate Frive’s product to an already saturated market, Among Equals took a bold approach, tapping into the company’s health-conscious and determined elements.

With the old identity being very targeted at gym-goers, who already had a strong focus on health and nutrition, Among Equals had to find a way to expand it without losing the loyal customer base that ultimately allowed it to grow so quickly. The name change was already a big step in the right direction, as Jeffrey-Barrett explains how Lions Prep had a very specific message – “meal prep, power, energy to go to the gym” – and didn’t fit with Frive’s ambition to become a household name.

While the identity still references health and nutrition through colors, art direction and logo, the brand aesthetic and voice were designed with the new, broader target audience in mind.

A new distinctive element that takes centre stage in the Frive brand is a simple food tray based on those used in Frive deliveries. “As well as differentiating Frive as a ‘ready to heat’ meal brand, and not a meal prep company as some might think, this bowl gave us a strong foundation for the entire graphic system,” explains Jeffrey-Barrett.

The bowl appears as the dot in the “i” of the logotype and is also used as a framing device for images, as a motif, as a user interface element, and in icons. “We put this bowl absolutely everywhere,” Jeffrey-Barret explains, “but the iconography is probably my favorite part of the whole system because every icon has the bowl in it.”

“They’re both fun and satisfying, but they’re also incredibly functional and communicative.” The design team believed the device would be easy to implement, as is necessary in a growing business, and would create “mental availability” because this singular asset can be reused in different ways.

Frive’s new logotype is inspired by Kilotype’s Old School Grotesque. Among Equals modified the letterforms to perfectly integrate the bowl into the “i”, rounding the other characters in accordance with its shape.

For the rest of the brand’s typography, the studio worked with type foundry Displaay, resulting in Frive Jokker. Minimal changes were made to the foundry’s original Jokker – which Jeffrey-Barrett describes as having “personality and punch” – as it already embodied the same roundness of the plate in many ways.

She explains that these changes helped make Frive Jokker “100% proprietary,” which is important because fonts are “a powerful and distinctive asset for brands.”

“In our experience, they are even more important for fast-growing brands that may not have millions to spend on design and production,” adds Jeffrey-Barrett.

“You use your title font absolutely everywhere, so for us it’s on par with the logo in terms of the most important elements to master.”

When the brand was called Lions Prep, its colour palette was quite austere, so Among Equals added more earthy tones to adapt it to a wider audience. Jeffrey-Barrett describes the core palette as “fresh, natural and sophisticated, evoking an organic yet modern aesthetic”.
It’s made up of dark green (kale), cream, and white, with pops of other colors for variety, like tomato, earth, aqua, mint, and squash.

Jeffrey-Barrett says the design process went smoothly without any challenges or obstacles. He believes these things only happen when there is “a lack of alignment or clarity somewhere in the process” or when there are “multiple decision-makers with opposing views.”

She says: “We had a great relationship with the team, there was a lot of trust and good energy from all sides. We moved at a good pace, but we had time to dig deep and be subtle, and we had a shared ambition: to build a brand that would open a new era for the business.

“Building an effective brand is never easy, but having this kind of connection and collaboration can be surprisingly simple.”