Robin Clip

Project Overview
Robin Clip is an American consumer tech brand built around a genuinely clever idea: a silicone-and-steel clip case that lets you attach your Apple Watch inside your clothing for discreet, wrist-free wear. The sensor stays pressed against your skin for accurate health tracking, the face stays concealed, and you get all the functionality of your Apple Watch without wearing it on your wrist. Compatible with Apple Watch Series 4 through 11, SE, and Ultra models, it’s a simple solution to a problem that millions of Apple Watch users didn’t know they had — until they saw it.

The product was created by Florida-based inventor Peter Springer and launched via Kickstarter, where it caught the attention of the design press — including a feature on Core77, one of the most respected industrial design publications in the world. I partnered with the founder to lead comprehensive brand development for Robin Clip from the ground up: custom illustrations, motion graphics, UI design for the Robin Clip application, product packaging, and branded merchandise. This was a startup at the most exciting and demanding stage — moving from invention to brand, from prototype to product launch.

The Product & The Opportunity
Robin Clip sits at an interesting intersection of health tech, fashion, and sport. The use cases are broader than they might first appear. Athletes in sports where wrist-worn devices are prohibited — tennis competitors banned from wearing Apple Watches by the USTA, combat sports athletes, swimmers — now have a way to keep tracking their stats without the visible device. Medical users who need continuous health monitoring but find wrist wear uncomfortable or impractical have a new option. Anyone who simply doesn’t want a smartwatch visible with their outfit can clip it inside a waistband or pocket and still have full functionality within reach.

That range of use cases meant the brand couldn’t position itself too narrowly. It needed to speak to serious athletes, health-conscious everyday users, and tech-forward consumers simultaneously — all while maintaining the clean, premium aesthetic that the Apple Watch accessory market demands. Apple’s ecosystem has raised the bar for everything that exists within it. Any accessory that wants to live alongside Apple hardware has to look like it belongs there.

“Transform your smartwatch into a sleek, versatile, everyday smart tool.”

The Challenge
Launching a new consumer hardware brand is one of the hardest things to do in product design. You’re not just competing on product quality — you’re competing on every element of how the brand presents itself, from the logo on the packaging to the first frame of the explainer video. And in the Apple accessory space specifically, the standard is exceptionally high. Consumers and press alike are accustomed to a level of design polish that most startups can’t match.

The challenge I was brought in to solve was multidimensional. Robin Clip needed a brand identity that could establish instant credibility in a crowded, design-conscious market. It needed motion graphics and illustration work that could communicate how the product worked quickly and clearly — because a clip that goes inside your clothing is a genuinely novel concept that required visual explanation before it could be evaluated. And it needed an app UI that felt at home on an iPhone screen next to the native Apple Watch app it was designed to complement.

All of this had to come together around a Kickstarter launch — a format where first impressions are everything, where backers make decisions in seconds, and where the quality of the creative work directly determines whether a product gets funded or disappears. There’s no second chance at a Kickstarter launch.

Brand Identity & Visual Language
I developed the Robin Clip brand identity from scratch, working closely with founder Peter Springer to understand his vision for where the product sat in the market and who it was for. The name itself offered a strong creative foundation — a robin is nimble, lightweight, and built for movement. That became a throughline for the brand’s visual language: clean, precise, modern, and slightly playful without sacrificing the premium tech-adjacent positioning the product needed.

The brand system needed to work across a wide range of surfaces — digital screens, product packaging, apparel, promotional materials, and the app interface itself. Building a visual language that could flex that far while remaining coherent required a disciplined approach to color, typography, and iconography from the very start. Every element I introduced had to earn its place in the system.

Custom Illustration
Illustration was central to how Robin Clip could communicate its value proposition efficiently. When you’re selling something as genuinely novel as a clip that lets you wear your Apple Watch inside your clothes, you can’t rely on photography alone to explain it. People need to see the concept, understand the mechanism, and imagine themselves using it — all before they’ve held the product in their hands.

I developed a suite of custom illustrations that walked through the Robin Clip use cases: the clip mechanism, the attachment points, the different wear positions, and the variety of contexts where the product made sense. The illustration style was chosen to feel approachable and clean — technically precise enough to communicate the product accurately, but warm enough to feel like a brand that understood its users rather than an instruction manual that talked down to them.

App UI Design
Designing the Robin Clip app UI was one of the most technically demanding parts of this project. The Apple ecosystem is a high-bar environment — users have been trained by years of excellent Apple design to expect a certain level of craft, and anything that falls short reads as amateur immediately. The app needed to feel like it belonged on an iPhone: clean, purposeful, intuitive, and visually consistent with Apple’s design language while still having its own identity as a Robin Clip product.

I approached the UI design by mapping the user journey through the app — what someone needs to do from first launch, through pairing their Apple Watch, to accessing health data and customizing their tracking preferences. Every screen was designed around that journey, with a hierarchy that put the most important actions in the most accessible positions and reduced cognitive load at every step. The visual design applied the Robin Clip brand system within the constraints of iOS conventions, creating an experience that felt native without feeling generic.

Product Packaging
For a consumer hardware product launching in the Apple accessory space, packaging is a brand statement as much as a functional container. The unboxing experience — the moment a customer first holds the product in their hands — sets the tone for how they’ll feel about everything that follows. I designed the Robin Clip packaging with that moment in mind: clean, premium, and precise, with the kind of detail that signals a product made by people who care about every surface they control.

The packaging system had to work for direct-to-consumer shipping as well as potential retail placement, which meant the design needed to communicate the product’s value at a glance for someone encountering it on a shelf without any prior context. The result was packaging that could hold its own next to the premium accessory brands that dominate Apple’s retail partners.

Branded Merchandise
The apparel and merchandise pieces — t-shirts, hats, branded tape — served a dual purpose. They were products in their own right and walking brand ambassadors for a startup that couldn’t yet afford the kind of paid distribution that establishes household name recognition. I designed the merch line to have genuine appeal beyond brand loyalty: pieces that people would wear because they liked them, not just because they got them in a Kickstarter reward tier.

The hat and t-shirt designs carried the Robin Clip visual language cleanly, with enough personality to feel like a brand people wanted to associate with — something that mattered especially for a product targeting active, design-conscious consumers who have high standards for what they put their names behind.

Press & Market Reception
Robin Clip received coverage from Core77 at the time of its Kickstarter launch — a significant endorsement from one of the most respected design publications in the world, with an audience of over 240,000 designers and design-conscious consumers. Being featured on Core77 as a product worthy of attention is meaningful validation for any new hardware brand, and it speaks to both the quality of the product concept and the brand presentation that surrounded it.

The Kickstarter launch brought the Robin Clip to a global audience of early adopters — exactly the right initial market for a novel tech accessory that required some consumer education before it could achieve mainstream adoption. The brand work I contributed helped give the product the credibility and clarity it needed to convert interest into backing.

Core77  Featured Robin Clip as ‘Subversive Design’ — one of the most respected industrial design publications in the world.
Kickstarter  Launched to a global audience of design and tech early adopters.
robinclip.com  Live brand and e-commerce presence built on the identity system developed for launch.

The Outcome
Robin Clip launched with a brand presence that punched well above its weight as a startup. The identity system, illustration work, motion graphics, app UI, and packaging all worked together to present a product that looked and felt like it had been in development by a mature brand team — which is the standard required to compete in the Apple accessory market.

The live brand at robinclip.com reflects the visual language and positioning developed through this collaboration, and the product continues to be available through the brand’s own direct-to-consumer channel. For me, this project represents the kind of early-stage brand work I find most challenging and most rewarding: a genuinely innovative product, a founder with a clear vision, and a blank canvas for building the full visual world around a new idea.

It also demonstrates something I believe strongly about design at the Art Director level: the most important work happens before the product ships. The identity, the storytelling, the UI, the packaging — these are the decisions that determine whether a great product finds its audience or gets lost in the noise. With Robin Clip, we made sure it was found.

Deliverables
—  Comprehensive brand identity development
—  Custom illustration suite — product explainer and use case visuals
—  Motion graphics — product demonstration and promotional animation
—  App UI design for the Robin Clip iOS application
—  Product packaging design
—  Branded merchandise — t-shirts, hats, branded tape
—  Kickstarter campaign creative assets
—  Brand visual system for robinclip.com