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Rebellion Press
Kintsugi-inspired publishing house for journals, survival decks, and a weekly honest witness letter.
Challenge
Rebellion Press spans wildly different product types — lined notebooks and journals, physical survival card decks, and AI prompt toolkits for writers — across separate channels like Amazon KDP, print-on-demand, and a custom web app. The hard part isn't any single product; it's making all of them read as one brand. Everything has to carry the same philosophical spine — surviving with defiance, blooming in spite of judgement — without flattening into sameness or tipping into performed wellness.
Approach
Built a locked design system and voice that every product inherits: near-black and gold, Playfair Display over IM Fell English, ✦ decorators, and an 'opulent restraint' aesthetic that stays dark without going costume. A three-tagline architecture keeps messaging coherent — Soft Rebellion for the philosophy, Untamed Pages for the practice, Still Here for the audience. A weekly 'Still Here' witness letter is the front door, and notebooks and decks cross-sell as aesthetic companions rather than one-off products.
Outcome
Live, growing brand. Multiple notebook series are published on KDP, the Seeded by Storm and Tangled Vines survival decks are in print-on-demand production, and the Still Here weekly letter is running its third botanical series. The Novel and Memoir toolkits grew up here and have since moved to their own parent brand, Oleander Stories.
Services and deliverables
Brand Strategy & Design
- Brand & Voice System: A locked, kintsugi-inspired identity — dark palette, gold accents, literary serif typography, and a three-tagline architecture — applied consistently across notebooks, decks, and digital products. (Brand Identity, Design Systems, Art Direction, Copywriting, Voice & Tone)
- Publishing House Website: Dark, gold-repaired storefront site for the survival decks, journals, Still Here letter, and AI writing tools, with Playfair Display headlines and mono eyebrows. (Web Development, UI/UX Design, Responsive Design, SEO)
Publishing & Product Design
- Notebook & Journal Series: Dark-botanical and literary notebook lines — including Floral Requital, Half Savage, and Spectral Adler — designed and self-published through Amazon KDP. (Cover Design, Series Branding, KDP Publishing, SEO Copywriting)
- Survival Decks: Physical survival card decks — Soft Rebellion and the in-development Defiantly Alive — with original artwork direction and print-on-demand fulfillment. (Deck Design, Illustration Direction, Print Production, Product Strategy)
Digital Products & Audience
- Memoir & Autobiography AI Prompt Toolkit: A web app that interviews writers about their story and generates a precision AI prompt for a personalized, chapter-by-chapter outline. Built on Cloudflare Pages + Worker, Stripe checkout, and the Claude API; now shipping under Oleander Stories. (Full-Stack Development, Cloudflare Workers, Stripe, Claude API, Product Design)
- Still Here Weekly Letter: An honest, non-clinical weekly witness letter built around rotating botanical series — the brand's audience entry point, delivered through a custom email pipeline. (Email Series, Content Design, Editorial Strategy, Audience Building)
A project by Ember Pulse Studios, a web design and branding studio in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Ember Pulse Studios · Myrtle Beach, SC · 843-424-9090 · support@emberpulsestudios.com