Humans Being
What are we doing?
Humans Being is an editorial site that tells true stories about how people are doing, one number at a time. We named it, built the identity and brand book, designed the site and shaped the data behind every tracker.
We have 4K at home.We bought theticket anyway.
Broadway sold $1.91 billion in seats last season, its best year ever. Plays drew 3.3 million people. No explosions, no sequels. Just actors, a dark room and no pause button.
The top of the world.Table for 274.
That’s how many people stood on Everest on one day in May. Ten good days of weather, about a thousand summits, one very crowded rock. Somebody definitely asked a stranger to take their picture.
It skips. It scratches.We bought a billiondollars of it.
Everyone streams, and vinyl just had its best year since 1983. 46.8 million records, 19 straight years of growth. Turns out getting up to flip it was the point.
- Client
- Humans Being
- Category
- Editorial and data
- Our role
- Naming, identity, brand book, site design, editorial approach
- Sections
- Culture, Human limits, Science, Travel
The brief
The answers to big questions exist. They just sit in reports nobody finishes.
The idea
Hang everything on one question. If a story doesn’t help answer what are we doing? it doesn’t run.
The result
A name, an identity, a brand book and a site built to grow one tracker at a time.
From one question to a site.
Six stops from the name to the data, then the process behind all of it.
01 Brief and name
A name for what people are doing.
The brief boiled the whole idea down to one question. The name came from what people are doing, not what happened to them.
Brief and naming
02Identity
A mark with a wave on its head.
The H stands inside a shape with two rounded feet, like a person standing their ground. A wide grotesk does the shouting and a warm serif does the reading, so the site feels like a place to spend time, not a dashboard to scan.
The mark plays catch.
Things pop out of the wave and drop back in, and each section of the site throws its own. It plays once when a page opens and again on hover or tap. It never loops on its own.
Numbers tumble out and drop back in.
Brown and orange, on lots of white.
Brown and orange come straight from the logo. Teal is the cool support. Orange is the spark, not the room. Click a color to copy it.
The ratio, roughly, in any layout.
Display
AaBb
Aktiv Grotesk Ex
Wide, bold and upright, to match the wordmark. All caps at the big sizes. It does the shouting.
Text
AaBb
Source Serif 4
Every story, caption and intro. A sturdy serif tells the story, and its italic carries the tagline.
The brand book
Everything above lives in one book: the foundation, the voice, the visual language and the rules that keep it all together, so anyone can pick it up and make something that looks like Humans Being.
03 The site
One question, one number, one page.
Every story starts with a single question and follows public data to the answer. Each one gets its own page, so a single number can travel on social and bring people back.
Site design
Visit Humans Being04Illustration
The orange dot is a person.
Every story ends with an ad built like a Bauhaus poster. Cream paper, one color block, two hairline rules that set the grid, and a few big geometric shapes. The person always sits where the grid breaks.
Nobody up front.Nobody seems to mind.
Half a million driverless rides a week now, and Tampa’s on the list. Some people still say thanks when they get out. Old habits ride along.
The reference
Every new one gets held up against this.
- 1The gridA teal block snaps to two ink rules, one across the top and one down its right edge.
- 2The breakThe rider lands exactly where the rules cross, half on the block and half on the paper.
- 3One ideaAn empty ring in the windshield and a dotted arc to the dot tell the whole story.
- 4Big shapesThe sun straddles the block edge, and 500K sits tone on tone inside.
- 5The captionSection, story and place in small tracked caps on the open paper.
Cream paper with a light grain. The scene lives inside one color block, pushed to one side.
Two thin ink rules cross the frame. The block snaps to them.
A sun, ridge, peak or record crosses the block edge. One break, two at most.
Squares, quarter rounds, half circles, triangles and bars. No outlines, faces or gradients.
Color by role
05 The ads
Every story ends with an ad.
Each story closes with an ad that turns the insight into an idea, from the GOAT debate in sports to the progress of AI. In print it’s a poster. Online, every story becomes its own post.
Ads
06Voice and data
The friend who read the whole thing.
Humans Being sounds like the person at dinner who actually read past the headline. They checked the facts, and they tell you the story like you’re an adult. Tap a card to fix the sentence.
Plain, not dumbed down.
Specific, not sweeping.
Warm, not soft.
Honest about the gaps.
Drawn with the same 2px line.
Sixteen icons on a 24px grid. They support a word, they don’t replace it. Source and verified are the signature pair.
One chart, one point, one receipt.
Numbers are evidence, so they follow the same rules as the stories. Every one ends with a source, a date and a link.
of people worldwide now sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017.
worry about telling what’s real from what’s fake online.
Weekend hours online are climbing for every age group
Hours per weekend day. Example data from the brand guide, for illustration only.
- Title says the finding, not the topic.
- Label lines and bars directly.
- One y-axis. Never two scales on one chart.
- Bars start at zero. No 3D.
- Text stays in ink, never in the series color.
- Every chart has a plain summary for screen readers.
Don’t take our word for it. That’s the point.
07 The process
Human first. Machine second.
Every stage of Humans Being started with a person. AI supported four of the seven, and every time, the work came back to a human to decide.
Part one
Defining
Four stages. AI supported one.
What are
we doing?
01Brief
HumanBoiled the whole idea down to one question.
02Naming
HumanNamed it for what people are doing, not what happened.
HumansBeing#3C2415
03Identity
Human + AIDrew the mark and set the colors. The brand book was built together.
- Culture
- Human limits
- Science
- Travel
04Concept
HumanFour sections, each one a living tracker.
Part two
Building
Three stages. AI supported all three. Every call stayed human.
Claude
ChatGPT
Midjourney
Runway
Firefly05Product
Human + AIDesigned the site and chose the data. AI wrote the code and pulled research.
06Ads
Human + AIWrote and art directed. AI drafted the images.
07Social
Human + AILaunched on Instagram. AI produced the cards.
What we did
- Naming
- Identity
- Brand book
- Site design
- Data and editorial
- Ad concepts
- Social
05The ads, online
One number. One post.
Each story’s ad becomes its own post. The number travels on its own, and the receipts are one tap away. Scroll the feed, or tap any ad to jump to it.
We have 4K at home.We bought theticket anyway.
Broadway sold $1.91 billion in seats last season, its best year ever. Plays drew 3.3 million people. No explosions, no sequels. Just actors, a dark room and no pause button.
Humans BeingWe have 4K at home. What are we doing?
Two hours wasimpossible.Then two guys did itthe same morning.
Sabastian Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London. Yomif Kejelcha was 11 seconds behind him, in his very first marathon. Somewhere a wall is feeling a little silly.
Humans BeingTwo hours was What are we doing?
Emma had a good run.Meet Charlotte.
13,400 parents picked Charlotte last year, enough to end Emma’s six years at No. 2. Every one of them said it out loud a hundred times first. Then once more at the hospital.
Humans BeingEmma had a good run. What are we doing?
Two legends wore 23.One guy won 23.
Jordan and LeBron made the number famous. Michael Phelps won 23 Olympic golds and never wore it. The debate was at the bar. He was at the pool.
Humans BeingTwo legends wore 23. What are we doing?
The top of the world.Table for 274.
That’s how many people stood on Everest on one day in May. Ten good days of weather, about a thousand summits, one very crowded rock. Somebody definitely asked a stranger to take their picture.
Humans BeingThe top of the world. What are we doing?
It skips. It scratches.We bought a billiondollars of it.
Everyone streams, and vinyl just had its best year since 1983. 46.8 million records, 19 straight years of growth. Turns out getting up to flip it was the point.
Humans BeingIt skips. It scratches. What are we doing?
16.5 million peoplepulled over.Nobody was lost.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is the most visited place in the whole park system. 469 miles of overlooks and nowhere you have to be. Windows down is the whole point.
Humans Being16.5 million people What are we doing?
The lights are off.The work isn’t.
AI can now work 16 hours straight. No dinner. No ballgame. No bed. That’s the machine’s night. Ours is the interesting one.
Humans BeingThe lights are off. What are we doing?
One man reached 2882.Nobody’s been back.
Magnus Carlsen hit a 2882 rating in 2014. Twelve years later, nobody has matched it. Some of the players chasing him were 11 when he set it.
Humans BeingOne man reached 2882. What are we doing?
The longest lineof the yearwas everyonegoing home.
3.13 million people on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Leftovers in the carry-on. Mom’s voice still in their ear. Nobody minded the wait much.
Humans BeingThe longest line What are we doing?
More candles.Same cake.
The average American now lives to 79, the longest ever. That’s more birthdays, more toasts, more grandkids to help blow them out. Save us a slice.
Humans BeingMore candles. What are we doing?
It’s never unsure.That’s the problem.
The best AI still gets it wrong about 1 time in 5. It just never sounds like it. Somebody still has to read it twice.
Humans BeingIt’s never unsure. What are we doing?
Twelve stories, one system.
Every post rotates the lead color and finds its own break in the grid. The headline says the number like a person would. The serif underneath says why it matters. Double tap to like, the way everyone does.