# Alex → Felt: the proposed brand story

October 31, 2026. Direction for review, not a public rename announcement.

## What the Artie reference adds

Artie's official rebrand explanation describes a system in which binary-inspired circles and rectangles resolve into a photograph. Its visual behavior expresses its product. The elephant supplies continuity and has a product-specific meaning. The launch connects the new identity to customer outcomes rather than stopping at logo, colors and illustrations.

Source: https://www.artie.com/blogs/the-elephant-stays-artie-new-brand
Original reference: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jacqueline-cheong_artie-has-a-new-brand-the-elephant-stayed-activity-7521729662230732800-CAZ_/

## Proposed Felt principle: Care, put into motion

Resourceful agents connect individual recruiting actions into one continuous candidate journey. The crew builds the journey. Candidates are never assembled, sewn, processed or conveyed through a machine.

- Fasteners connect the pieces: information and actions around a recruiting team's goals.
- The needle lift carries the path forward: interviews, follow-ups and scheduling carried through by agents.
- The zipper and open door create a next step: a person ready for a conversation, with a team ready to meet them.
- The open-door identity stands for opportunity. The physical felt material gives warmth a visible form.

This is a proposed creative principle. It does not replace the endorsed candidate-journey product message, “Felt, at every step,” or competitive line, “The difference is felt.”

## Six chapters on the page

1. A new chapter for Alex: existing door + original protected wordmark, connected to the agentic platform positioning.
2. Every hire opens a future: what the open door means for people, teams and businesses.
3. Care, put into motion: whole-world view and three mechanism details, with a link to the four-frame motion direction.
4. One platform. Many capable hands: nine physical product objects; selecting one explains its job and outcome.
5. You can almost feel it: close inspection of the unchanged wordmark, its raised crossbar, fibers, palette roles and typographic tone.
6. The difference is felt: campaign composition and illustrative candidate invitation, explicitly disclosing the AI agent.

## Implementation and limits

The chapter tabs, next/back/replay, keyboard navigation, mechanism detail views, product explanations, material magnification and real palette artwork swaps work in the page. Reduced-motion preferences are respected. The four-frame storyboard remains a motion concept, not a finished film. The opening panorama now layers the original photographic crew and props over an AI-generated clean plate. The courier travels up the ramp; an articulated hand pulls the zipper; a calendar page bends; the door turns at its cloth hinge. Station buttons replay each part. Play/pause, offscreen suspension and reduced motion are supported. The other workshop illustrations remain still.

For the finished film, produce separate object/crew layers or a rigged 3D scene, with matching physical felt texture. Animate a single causal sequence: a pull tensions the thread, the bridge settles, a fastener secures the path, the door opens. Use anticipation, resistance and a settled ending. Keep the camera and composition contained. Do not simulate this by floating a flat sticker over a photograph or crossfading mismatched generated frames.

The original preferred wordmark and door artwork remain intact. A material-refinement study did not improve on their felt appearance and was not substituted into the site.


Round 19 extends the earlier chapter with the full design system, font specimens and candidate-journey visualization. The rebrand introduction now leads with the messaging document’s proposed “Make hiring more human. For everyone.” frame. “Care, put into motion” remains a proposed internal creative principle.


October 31 clarification: “Felt, at every step.” means Felt is with the candidate through screening, interviews, scheduling and what comes next. The task/process/operations ladder separately explains the work a recruiting team can choose to delegate.