Human-Centered AI: How Forethought Built Its New Brand From the Ground Up

By Deon Nicholas

At Forethought, we believe business should have a higher purpose than simply creating shareholder value.

Forethought’s mission has long been to unlock human potential through the power of artificial intelligence. Simply put, we’ve always believed Forethought’s AI will change the world. Customer service is simply our first act.

That mission is resonating. In the past two years alone, Forethought has experienced 22x growth. We were recently named by Forbes as one of the Next Billion-Dollar Startups.

But we knew that in order to achieve our mission, our brand values and our brand identity had to be aligned. Our messaging and positioning needed to accurately convey our value to CX teams so that customers would know how and where we can help.

And so, five months ago, we decided to take a closer look at our brand. 

We started by thinking through what we wanted the Forethought brand to represent—the feelings and emotions we want customers to have when they interact with our company, whether on the phone or on the website or in an ebook. 

This proved to be a fascinating exercise. Here are few points we decided were unique and important to the Forethought brand, as well as corresponding brand personality attributes that we felt aligned with each point:

  • Making the Impossible Possible: Forethought is advancing the field of AI and doing what was previously considered impossible.
    • Attributes we want our brand to convey: Confident, Bold, Intelligent
  • Human-Centered: Our AI unlocks human potential by empowering customers and employees to be their best selves.
    • Attributes we want our brand to convey: Friendly, Approachable, Kind
  • Complete AI Platform: Our Platform transforms the entire customer service lifecycle. In other words, we’re much more than a chatbot.
    • Attributes we want our brand to convey: Connected, Colorful, Continuous

With these brand values and attributes in mind, we took another look at our then-current logo, color palette, and website. It quickly became clear that our mission at Forethought had outgrown our brand.

It was official: the time had come for a new Forethought brand.

Where does one begin creating a new brand?

To kick off the creation of a new brand identity that aligned with our brand values and trajectory, we engaged with a phenomenal branding and web agency to help us brainstorm and execute. We began with a moodboard exploration, collecting examples from anywhere and everywhere that resonated with our new visual direction.

A colorful, connected, human-centered theme began to emerge.

One of the more challenging parts of this process was the logo. We worked through nearly 20 iterations of various visual directions for our new logo with the agency, but nothing screamed Forethought.

Then we had a thought: Forethought makes the impossible possible. What’s something impossible that we could showcase in logo form?

Thankfully our CEO, Deon, is a huge Christopher Nolan fan (to put it lightly) and immediately latched onto the idea of the penrose stairs, an “impossible concept” featured in the film Inception:

After several more iterations of the Forethought “F”, taking the penrose stairs as inspiration, the new Forethought logo was born:

Like the penrose stairs, our new logo is continuous and represents an impossible concept. Fitting, as Forethought makes the impossible possible across one seamless, continuous AI platform.

Other elements of the new Forethought brand began to come together, including new product icons with their own designated color palette—again signifying how Forethought helps CX teams transform customer service across the entire support lifecycle:

Finally, our new brand culminated in a new website built from the ground up, as well as a product rebranding that matched our visual identity and our brand voice and tone:

We couldn’t be more excited about Forethought’s new brand identity. It champions our brand values. It brings to life our brand promise and messaging. And ultimately, it elevates our mission: to unlock potential with human-centered AI.

Check out our new website here!

Also, we’d love to talk! To learn more about Forethought and see if we could be a fit for your CX needs, contact us here.

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Interested in generative AI for customer support? Check out this guide to learn about the 3 key pillars you need to get started.

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