Koora is a new Australian startup building the verified career passport for care workers — and the real-time compliance layer for the providers who hire them across aged care, disability and childcare. Care workers carry a portable, verified profile of their qualifications, experience and reputation, while providers get faster onboarding and real-time compliance confidence. For Good Design Lab worked with Koora founder Justin Tankey to develop the full brand strategy, brand identity and marketing website ahead of launch.

Australia's care sector is going through enormous change, with Royal Commissions, scandals and staffing crises dominating the news cycle — and a landscape full of safe, corporate, forgettable brands. As a new startup launching in a heavily regulated market, Koora needed an identity that could earn trust fast while standing out in an industry that plays it safe. The work had to feel optimistic and bold without ever feeling flippant about what's at stake: people's careers, livelihoods and wellbeing.

The brand strategy is built around a single central idea — Koora is here to uplift care. Care work is essential, but right now the sector can't see its best people. Koora makes quality care visible, so the best can rise, standards lift, and people in need get the care they deserve. That idea shaped every decision that followed, from the angle of the logotype to the choice of mascot, palette and type.

The Koora logotype is set on an angled baseline, creating an upward momentum that reflects the brand's purpose of uplifting care. It is bold, playful and full of personality, designed to stand apart from the cautious wordmarks that dominate the sector.

Kooka, Koora's brand mascot, is a kookaburra illustrated by Marco Palmieri that nods to the brand's Australian roots and brings the purpose of uplifting care to life. Kooka personifies Koora's role as an advocate for better care and gives the brand a playful, memorable character in a sector that plays it safe. The mascot was developed across a library of poses, sector-specific badges for aged care, disability and childcare, and a series of spot illustrations for the marketing website, with simple animations bringing the character to life.

Care comes from the heart, and red is the colour of the heart. The palette is built around a bold, confident red supported by a simple, vibrant set of secondary colours — a brand that is instantly recognisable, warm enough to feel human, and bold enough to be remembered.

Koora's primary typeface is Melun Medium by Lift Type, which builds on the character of the logotype and carries its uplifting spirit through the typography, most visibly in the lowercase 'e'. Mallory by Frere-Jones is the secondary typeface — a humanist sans serif that pairs naturally with Melun and works hard in UI, with its Book and Medium weights supporting the system from product interface to marketing copy.

The result is a brand and website that stand out and earn trust from day one: a confident, character-led identity in a sector that plays it safe, grounded enough to be trusted with people's careers and sensitive information. In the words of founder Justin Tankey: "Dan navigated the push and pull of everything I was grappling with — the rebel tone I wanted, the trust the sector demands, and the uplifting story underneath it all. He took a messy brief and turned it into a brand that genuinely feels like the Koora I imagined, one that care workers and providers can trust from day one."