The Smilist
Brand Development
and Identity System

When it comes to distinguishing itself from volumes of competing dental offices, the Smilist truly lives by their slogan "We're different. In a good way." The company maintains a burgeoning network of locations in Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey, providing the surrounding community with a range of dental services and expertise. Since coming on to the small marketing team in 2014, I've honed in on a consistent and unique visual identity and brand expression. 

What began with designing monthly EDDM mailers has evolved into a comprehensive exercise in developing the Smilist brand from the ground up, including articulating their mission, vision, values, brand promise, and personality. The Smilist’s vision is to change a patient’s relationship with dental care by “providing an exceptional customer journey.” And in doing so, the company truly reflects this idea in the visual identity of its communications — subscribing to a holistic, lifestyle-centered philosophy to dental care, considering not only the patient and their dental experience, but the broader context of dental care within an individual’s life. A person’s smile is integral to their sense of self, confidence, social settings, and outlook. By keeping this in mind, the Smilist brand is elevated from it’s competition by making dental care more than just about clean teeth.

Identifying the brand’s personality is easy by simply asking: “How do you feel when you smile?” Confident, caring, motivated, and friendly are the benchmarks for every brand expression and differentiate it from the competitive landscape. The voice is informative, direct, and inviting while visuals express a broader lifestyle view than just cliche dental imagery. Photography featured big smiles, rolling laughter, and warm hearts. Color palette, typography, and graphic elements are warm and human. And most notably: a full ecosystem of customized and scalable illustrations that represent the community and diversity and joy that is inherent to the Smilist brand. With these character illustrations, patients see themselves reflected in diversity of gender, age, race, culture, and physical form and the Smilist’s communications are able to represent infinite unique family units and community groups. 

To date, work has included integrated ad campaigns, OOH billboards, educational materials, print advertising, social strategy and content, identity design, web design, signage and environmental branding, and more. The success of the Smilist brand is unmistakable as the company continues to attract new patients, open new locations and affiliations, and increase awareness, following, and engagement on social media.