Groupon’s Design Journey
A journey through Groupon’s design history. From a “Grohmbus” to a wordmark.
2010
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To be the world’s commerce operating system, increasing consumer buying power while driving more business to merchants through price and discovery.
Customer Worship
Win-Win-Win
Consistent Quality
Discovery & Surprise
Long Term Outlook
Candor
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Groupon humor is strange, surprising, nonsensical, absurd. It's not offensive or mean-spirited.
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Mastering the Groupon Voice: A Guide to Absurdity, Authority, and Avoiding Clichés
The Groupon Editorial Manual outlines a distinct writing style characterized by absurd imagery, hypothetical scenarios, mixed metaphors, and fake history, all delivered with an authoritative and omniscient tone. It discourages traditional marketing clichés, overuse of the second person, and unnecessary exclamation points, instead favoring humor that surprises the reader without calling attention to itself. Writers should avoid offensive content, tired pop-culture references, and predictable local humor while steering clear of running jokes and exaggerated poeticism. The guide emphasizes confident storytelling, unexpected juxtapositions, and a careful balance between wit and clarity, ensuring that the Groupon voice remains engaging, original, and free from marketing jargon.
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Why It's Illegal to Photograph the Moon
Photography was invented in 1908 for the purpose of shaming racehorses into running faster. Embarrassed at the implied speed of their still portraits, horse speeds doubled within a year. The new technology quickly gained popularity with a myriad of other velocity-related applications, including the use of photography to shame children into growing faster. By 1950, the average height in the United States was 11 feet.
As a race of giants, Americans quickly outgrew the planet Earth and entered the moon race against the shorter Soviets. Unfortunately, once both countries had established their moon bases, the moon's negligible gravitational pull gave the smaller, lighter cosmonauts an advantage, and the Americans were badly defeated in the First Moon War. For this reason, it is now illegal to talk about, think of, or photograph the moon.
Groupon Green
HEX #76A045
Text Gray
HEX #494949
2013
Groupon Green
HEX #82b548
2015
Groupon Green
HEX #53a318
2018
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Groupon's mission is To be the destination for experiences -- where customers discover fun things to do and local businesses thrive.
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Respect, Integrity, and Inclusion - Solving Problems The Right Way, Together
Community - Build Local Everywhere
Ownership and Performance - Act Like It’s Your Business
Inspiration - Make Work Less Boring
Customers - Begin and End with the Customer
2021
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Groupon is a marketplace where customers discover new experiences and services everyday and local businesses thrive.
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Ownership and Accountability - We are deeply committed to our transformation strategy.
High Performing - As a team, we strive to be recognized as world leaders in our sector
Innovative - E-commerce never stands still, a growth mindset is crucial
Transparent - Open communication is essential for growth and success
Customer Focused - As a marketplace serving both merchant partners and consumers, they sit at the heart of everything we do.
Respect, Integrity, and Inclusion - We value inclusivity, diversity, and equity, ensuring that the best ideas shine.
The Primary Elements
Our Primary Elements are as colorful as we are, but they’re also functional. Lest we forget, we don’t just sell one kind of experience—we’ve got thousands broken down into six basic categories. This colorful palette helps to visually distinguish our spa deals from hotel offers, food & drink from go-kart passes.
Our Cloud Colors are used as backgrounds to anchor each color family.
Our Gradients are used for accent
bars (Comet’s Tails, shown here) and headlines. Each color family has several versions of the gradient depending on the application.
Groupon Green
HEX #008a22
Galaxy Black
HEX #230f33
Starlight White
HEX #FFFFFF
