Recustom
Making Ritual Your Own
Judaism has a rich history of ritual and community to nourish our humanity through the beautiful and bewildering journey of life. At a time when humans are facing an abundance of challenge and change – from the long tail of Covid, to a rising mental health crisis, to societal divisions – the team behind Haggadot.com saw an opportunity to bring together their incredible network of Jewish cultural organizations to help people across the spectrum of Jewish identity find connection and meaning. To engage with rituals on their own terms.
The result is a new online platform called Recustom which provides ways to remix and adapt Jewish rituals beyond a couple of holidays per year. It’s a community of meaning and care where all identities, traditions and intersectionalities are not only welcomed, but embraced.
Photography courtesy of Ali Levin
Audience Research
Brand Strategy
Brand Naming and Narrative
Brand Identity
Celebrating all Paths and Perspectives
To welcome people of all ages and walks of life, we needed to hold the tension between old and new – to honor the value of tradition and ritual while also welcoming the curiosity and questioning that is part of the Jewish soul. We spoke with young people seeking community through Shabbat, families engaging children in their Jewish heritage, those marrying into the Jewish faith and individuals seeking comfort in Jewish values as they plan for the end-of-life.
What emerged was a vision for people who engage with their Jewish identity in myriad ways with the flexibility to pick and choose how they want to experience ritual on their terms. All Jews, including Jews of Color, Jews who are LGBTQ+, Jew-ish people who have felt alienated by traditional institutions are helped to overcome the fear of “doing it wrong” by embracing playfulness and a spirit of endless possibilities.
Where Intention Meets Creativity
With a vision to create a world abounding with people who are connected, community-minded, and empathetic, we wanted to design a brand identity and experience that would signal joy, creativity, purpose and play. We dubbed the new organization Recustom not only to emphasize their mission to empower people to make ritual their own, but also to convey the dynamism of ritual in culture when we adapt it, remix it, use it, reflect, and remix again to meet the ongoing and evolving needs of life.
Every element in the design system – from the logo that merges the old and the new to the bright and active intergenerational photography – brings this idea of reinventing, reimagining, mixing, and matching to life. Even the graphic language we designed is inspired by ancient sacred geometry and symbolism, yet looks decidedly modern in its application.
Create, Adapt, Explore
To launch Recustom, we designed a website that helps users easily navigate across five content channels for different life stages and occasions. We also equipped the team with marketing tools and templates for social media, presentations, and newsletters. The new Recustom platform feels inviting to all and empowers users to create, explore, adapt, and play. No matter where they are on their ritual journey.
