User Experience, Interface and Brand Identity Design
PROJECT SUMMARY The brief for this project was to design a brand identity for Threads, including a full suite of brand collateral. The client was looking for a diverse identity that works across a wide range of contexts, and would be suitable for the target audiences.
The brand takes a designer led approach without the high price tags, making the brand appropriate for price conscious young professionals and students, looking for something more unique and special than existing high-street fashion retailers.
Threads is an interactive clothing brand fusing online and offline brand experiences. My proposed brand identity forms a combination of chic sophistication with accessible, affordable fashions for a young 18-30 year old audience.
The brand values, sophisticated, affable and neoteric clearly represent this. The brand culture is centred around big city life, with a clear connection to London, which naturally brings a high-profile tone to the brand identity.
VALUES Sophisticated | Affable | Neoteric
COLOURS The gradiated colour schemes used within the identity represent London at night. The flexible identity system has the ability to adapt a colour scheme according to the present season.
VALUE STATEMENT Threads’ identity represents a luxury, chic designer clothing label, made accessible to the young, professional audience through affordable prices and high quality goods making the brand good value for money.
Futura PT Heavy
AaBbCcDd This type style would be used for Heading styles.
Museo Sans 300
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLl MmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVv WwXxYyZz This is the type style for body text and website.
The hash-tag is a core part of the Threads digital concept and therefore became a key point of inspiration for the icon design. The icon is a graphic element which runs through the identity including the pattern which adds texture to certain contexts such as the postal tube.
2%C 85%M 8%Y 0%K 233R 77G 145B
62%C 58%M 6%Y 0%K 114R 114G 172B
CRISP & CONSIDERED STATIONARY A full set of brand collatoral has been considered here, providing an identity solution that works across a wide spectrum of contexts. Here we see the postage tube, welcoming letter for new customers, invoice, postcard with envelope and style ambassador’s business cards.
KNITTED Threads’ target audience thrives on stories; stories which inspire them to make a purchase online or instore. It could spark a converstation on Facebook, or start trending on Twitter. Knitted provides these stories. Knitted is a seasonal newspaper which will be distributed to the target audience through boutique outlets and included in the online purchasing orders. The purpose of the magazine is to inspire the reader into the culture surrounding Threads, such as days out in London, dining, nights out, seasonal fashions.
EMAIL DESIGN Following research in to competitors of Threads, I identified the need for consideration of email communications with customers in terms of design. Here I have shown how the email receipt would appear following a customer order being placed.
DIGITAL STRATEGY As an online retailing brand, the Threads website design was a crucial part of the brief, and it needed to successfully represent the brand identity. Following identification that image based communication suited the target audience, I decided to follow this approach online. The images are toned with gradients to match the rest of the visual identity. The ‘culture’ section of the website follows a blog-like structure where articles are linked off social media to drive traffic to the website for inspiration and ultimately conversions into purchases.
During the user interface design process I considered how the website would function on mobile devices such as tablets. My target audience research highlighted that a vast number of purchases are likely to take place on a tablet, certainly amongst male audiences.
SOCIAL The success of Threads depends upon people buying products, and this is either done online or in store so we need to successfully communicate to the audiences. Social media provides the best opportunity to communicate to the audiences as they are key users of this technology. They communicate with their friends on social media, and brands are increasingly using this technology to tap into their news feeds. Here is an example of how the Threads identity would work on Facebook, and shows some example content which would be similar to that of the Knitted newspaper.
ADVERTISING Bus Stop / Tube Advertising
Bus & Metro Newspaper Advertising
The purpose of the campaigns around London and major cities is to target the young business people of Britain and encourage them to explore Threads online.
Other campaigns plan to feature in relevant, often free, newspapers such as METRO & The Evening Standard and will be focused around the opening of Threads Boutiques within keynote department stores such as Harrods.
Designed by Ollie Cox | 11700440 www.olivercoxcreative.co.uk 0121 288 3724