How we unfolded: Building a new world of entertainment.
Lightfold is a studio bringing fans and creators together to make animation, comics, and games. We built a brand and platform designed to stretch across original entertainment, merchandise, social, community, and commerce, then launched the entire ecosystem.
Lightfold
Years: 2023 – 2026
Industry: Entertainment
(Internal)
Services
Creative Direction
Brand Strategy
Brand Identity
Brand Voice & Copywriting
Web Design & Development
Email Marketing
IT
Background
Lightfold was born in 2023 with Godspeed, the independently funded animated series Olan Rogers brought directly to his fans. The response proved there was an appetite for a different model, one where creators and audiences could build something together.
Before Lightfold could become that platform, it needed an identity flexible enough to hold whatever came next. The name itself became the jumping-off point. “Lightfold” nods to faster-than-light travel, an idea that feels futuristic and nostalgic at the same time. We leaned into that tension with a retrofuturistic identity inspired by analog imperfections and the strange visual language of early visions of the future.
The final mark grew from the idea of type bending across an event horizon, giving Lightfold a visual system rooted in storytelling, technology, and motion. That identity quietly set the stage for the platform it would eventually become.
Expanding the brand and preparing for launch
In the summer of 2026, Lightfold formed its first external partnership with Flying Bark on an original animated series called Doomsweepers. Suddenly, three things had to happen at once: Lightfold needed to evolve beyond its original identity, Doomsweepers needed a world of its own, and the platform connecting them both had to go live.
I was building all three in parallel, shaping Lightfold into a stronger parent brand while helping launch Doomsweepers across web, merch, and social, and developing the Shopify platform underneath it all.
The challenge was creating enough structure to make Lightfold recognizable without forcing every property into the same visual language. Each show needed room to feel entirely its own, while still making sense as something you’d discovered inside the Fold.
The teaser
We dropped a teaser two weeks before launch, complete with an original score by Andrew Goodwin. I migrated us from Squarespace and to Shopify, then dove into my first front and backend Shopify build.
Building our email list became the primary KPI to show investors we had a hungry audience. And we exceeded expectations.
More to come…
Credits
Creative Direction: Liz Butler, Olan Rogers
Brand Identity: Liz Butler, Matthew Dugger, Nick Dew
Design: Liz Butler, Matthew Dugger, Anna Bergman
Development: Liz Butler, Patrick Walters, Rachel Rogers
Video: Trevor Hancock, Seth Tyler Jackson
Merchandise: Rachel Rogers, Candy Ferrera
Music Andrew Goodwin
Social Media: Candy Ferrera, Andy Coen
Community Management: Nick Rodriguez