Rung

An upbeat, plain-spoken identity for a first-job platform, turning the dread of the first application into a ladder young people actually want to climb.

Year

2024

Scope

Identity · Tone of voice · Campaign · Website

The idea

Your first job is a rung, not a destination, and most of the people looking for one have been told to sound older than they are. Rung wanted to drop the act. The identity speaks plainly to an eighteen-year-old and to the person hiring them in the same voice, with no corporate gloss and no attempt to be cool. Just a hand up.

The work

A chunky wordmark with a horizontal bar through the letters, which is both a rung and an underline, as if someone has pointed at your name. We used a tall condensed typeface for headlines so short words fill a phone screen, a bright yellow that holds up on cheap print, and a tone of voice guide written entirely in sentences under ten words.

What happened

Rung partnered with twelve colleges in its first term and the posters, printed cheaply on purpose, were still up at the end of the year. Employers told Aisha the applications read more honestly than they were used to. Plain speaking works both ways, it turns out.

“It talks to our users like people rather than candidates, and that changed how they talked back.”

Aisha Bello, Co-founder of Rung

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