Creative Brand Strategy - Task 2A & 2B

April 21, 2025 - (Week 3 - Week 5)

Linchenyi/ 0367008

Graphic design/Bachelor of Design in Creative Media

Creative Brand Strategy - Task 2A & 2B

INSTRUCTIONS 

LECTURE

WEEK 5

WEEK 7

TASK :

In this project, you will develop a Design Brief for the proposed Brand Campaign.

Start with its contents such as Campaign Name, Communication Goals and Key Message based on theBig Idea.

From there you will develop the Ideation & Design Direction.

The objective is to generate well-founded opportunities that have a good prospect of creating value to the end-market, which matches the brand’s strength and strategy. It is a process that helps you to ask the right questions, get obvious solutions out of your head, discover unexpected innovative areas, create volume/variation of design possibilities.

2A: Ideation

From the Brand Touch Points identified in the Campaign Proposal (1B), continue to research for application references that represent or symbolize your Brand Campaign. Select only the MOST relevant (unique and portrays the subject in every context) touch points to build your Critical Application List, and include a short description for each application. Consider how each touch point would help to elevate or achieve the overall Brand Campaign.

2B: Design Direction

You are to articulate the design direction by developing a set of mood boards or stylescape, comprised with visual style, colour palettes, typography, graphic elements & etc. This will be the proposed look and feel of your Brand Campaign.

2A｜Concept: Key Brand Touchpoints & Application List

Based on the initial event proposal, I selected the following representative and effective touchpoints to enhance the communication and interaction of this brand event:

1. Event Poster

Function: Used in high-traffic areas such as streets and business districts as the first visual attraction. Combined with the main visual of the event and the slogan "Make Beauty Playful", it conveys the atmosphere of the event.

2. Brand Website

Function: The core entrance to event information. Design a pop-up event introduction page and appointment participation button to facilitate user understanding and participation.

3. Pop-up Vending Machine or Mobile Truck

Function: Offline touchpoint experience carrier. Provide functions such as trial, interactive photography, and scan code lottery to divert online traffic to offline interaction.

4. Sample Trial Kit

Function: Experience gift box distributed to on-site or scheduled users. Contains outer packaging box, trial products, small stickers and commemorative keychains to enhance the sense of experience ceremony.

5. Social Media Ads

Function: Release event countdown, user UGC content, celebrity endorsement pictures, create online topic heat, and form forwarding and diffusion.

DESIGN BRIEF PROPOSAL

2B｜Design direction: mood board + style setting

In order to unify the visual tone of the entire brand activity, I developed a set of moodboards including color matching, fonts, and emotional images to clarify the direction of this design.

Moodboard display link (MIRO): https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVIuJpkFc=/

Fig 1.1 Idea board

FEEDBACK

WEEK 8

I think the second website page will be better and more attractive. As for the choice of poster, I think both are good, as long as the visibility of the text is ensured. Due to the background, the text on the poster cannot be read. I can try to expand a blank space to place my logo to make it more conspicuous.

REFLECTION

Experience

The work in this phase is not just about the product, but about a clear “big idea”: we want to promote an offline beauty experience event that can establish an emotional connection with users and encourage them to participate in the interaction. At first, I mainly collected and analyzed the brand’s existing visual language and market positioning, and then tried to think about how to reach the audience through different media. When conceiving the touch points, I paid special attention to media that are highly interactive and widely disseminated with users, such as pop-up experience cars, interactive trial kits, promotional posters, and social media short videos. Each one is not a simple enumeration, but is matched according to the brand strategy to truly express the spirit of the event.

In the design direction stage (2B), I developed a whole set of new visual solutions for the event, continuing Glossier’s original soft pink tone, but adding more modern neutral colors, such as smoky rose pink and milk apricot; at the same time, I matched a more modern and more friendly font combination, so that the visual communication takes into account both gentleness and individual expression, close to the pursuit of "natural beauty" and "self-expression" by Generation Z users.

Observations

I have observed that many brand activities can easily become one-off publicity that is "forgotten after seeing it" if they do not have a clear communication strategy and emotional positioning. A truly infectious activity must create a story and a sense of participation of the user role in addition to the visual. For example, the experience car is not just a decorative space, but an experience place where "you can scan the code to try makeup, check in and take photos, and receive limited trial packages", and it is a source of content that can be forwarded and spread on social media. At the same time, I also noticed that visual language plays a key role in brand activities: colors, materials, fonts, etc. are not just aesthetic choices, but convey brand personality and imply the tone of the activity.

Findings

Through the work in this stage, I deeply realized that conception and design are not two isolated links, but a complete system that supports each other and promotes brand communication together. The conception in the 2A stage helped me clarify "what to do" and "why to do it"; and the design in the 2B stage allowed me to practice "how to do it more effectively". I realized that design should not be just a collage of superficial visuals, but a strategic expression around user behavior, brand value and communication logic. Especially when designing touchpoints, I gradually learned how to balance the existing brand recognition with the freshness required for new activities, and find a reasonable transition between "familiarity" and "innovation".

This stage also made me pay more attention to the balance between "user perspective" and "brand consistency". On the one hand, creativity is needed to attract attention, and on the other hand, it cannot deviate from the brand tone. This tension is the most challenging but also the most valuable part of brand activities.