Kotoba is a frontier voice AI company developing real-time speech and simultaneous translation technology across East Asian languages with 100,000+ users and a foundational speech-to-speech model licensed to global technology companies. Following its third seed round, the company partnered with Nowthen to accelerate its commercial growth across the US and APAC.

As part of the Nowthen team, I worked on the new identity alongside strategy, copywriting, motion and development contributors.

Kotoba needed a brand that could communicate the precision of its AI without feeling clinical or generic. The identity had to bridge technical credibility with human warmth, while capturing the fluid, inherently human nature of speech, translation, and real-time communication.

The visual identity was built around openness, flow, and universal communication. A geometric wordmark and expressive submark establish a precise but approachable foundation, paired with a restrained black-and-white palette base and energetic green and yellow accents.

The wider visual language introduces movement through wave-driven photography, flowing line and pixel patterns, dot-based iconography, halftone imagery, and data visualisation. Latin and Japanese typography bring consistency across scripts, creating a flexible system spanning product, research, enterprise, and consumer touchpoints.

The resulting identity positions Kotoba as a technically credible voice AI company with a distinctly human purpose - giving the brand a visual language capable of scaling across its translation app, research, technology partnerships, and growing global presence.