They needed a brand that could meet two very different people in the same room. Peerstar is a Medicaid-covered behavioral healthcare service based in Pennsylvania, connecting people working through mental health challenges, addiction, and other life struggles with Certified Peer Specialists — trained professionals who've been there themselves. As Peerstar grew beyond its early footprint, the existing brand wasn't keeping up. There was barely a brand to speak of, and certainly nothing that could carry the weight of a serious healthcare provider. But the new identity couldn't go too corporate either. Peerstar's clients are real people in small towns and rural communities — not the kind of audience that responds to glossy, sterile healthcare branding. The brand had to do both jobs at once.
Authentic enough for a Dunkin', polished enough for a hospital boardroom.
We built Peerstar a flexible identity system designed for code-switching. A solid, confident logo anchors the brand and signals professionalism to referral partners, healthcare facilities, and government bodies. Around it, we built a looser, warmer layer: hand-drawn seals and marks, a saturated color palette, and a multi-font typography system that gives the brand room to breathe. Peerstar can show up in a clinical PDF for Medicaid administrators or a flyer pinned in a community center, and it reads as the same brand both times — just speaking the right language for the room.
Letting the data drive the redesign.
Before we touched a wireframe, we dug into Peerstar's GA4 and Microsoft Clarity data. The picture was clear: prospective Certified Peer Specialists were dropping off before they could find a way to apply, and people looking for specific program information were bouncing without finding it. The old site was burying its most valuable content. We rebuilt the information architecture around what users were actually trying to do — find a peer, refer someone, or apply for a job — and made each path obvious from the homepage down.
A page for every audience, a path for every action.
Peerstar serves a wide range of people — clients in active recovery, families looking for help, county case managers submitting referrals, and prospective Certified Peer Specialists exploring careers — and each one needs different information to take the next step. Rather than flatten all that into a generic "Services" bucket, we built dedicated landing pages for each of Peerstar's four core programs: Community Peer Support, Forensic Peer Support, Substance Use Recovery, and Senior Living Support. Each one speaks to its specific audience in their language, with the content and proof points that matter to them.
The careers experience got the same treatment — we built two separate application paths, one for general Certified Peer Specialists and one for nursing home CPS roles, because the candidate pools are genuinely different and a one-size form was leaving applicants on the table.
Across the site, distinct conversion paths for getting support, submitting a referral, and becoming a peer specialist each get their own dedicated form experience, designed to move people through the funnel rather than dump them into a generic contact page.
Built to be used, not admired.
Brand systems fall apart when they're too clever to use. We spent real time on the typography system specifically because Peerstar's internal team needed to produce materials for wildly different audiences without a designer holding their hand every time. The system pairs a serious, professional face with warmer, more expressive options — and we documented exactly when to reach for each one. The result is a brand that holds together whether it's being used by a marketing lead or a regional manager putting together a one-pager.
The new Peerstar reads as a serious, established healthcare provider — and as a service built by people who genuinely understand what their clients are going through. The brand holds up across every audience it has to reach, and the site now does the actual work of moving people toward support, referrals, and careers.
Copywriting Credit: Chava Shapiro (link to website: https://www.showmethecopy.com/)
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