Client
AWeber
Project type
Branding for Marketing Material
Discipline
Branding
UI
Role
Web/Graphic Designer
Overview
In 2017, the AWeber marketing team decided that in order to market their product to potential customers, they needed to show exactly how one could use their product in conjunction with users product(s) and/or service(s). This had been done in the past, with multiple online courses, a podcast, etc. but the brief for this particular project was to create an entire brand for AWeber's very own mascot, AJ the Astronaut, in order to showcase how the email marketing tool could be used for any sort of content.
Research
The marketing team was able to provide a list of what most users of AWeber's email market tool.
Three products stood out:
• Online courses and/or PDF sales.
• Branded Merchandise.
• Podcasts
We decided to focus our attention on these three products in the ideation phase for what product/services AJ could be looking to promote.
Challenges
• Develop branding that was in line with the AJ character but could also work as a stand-alone in advertisements.
• Faux products needed to be relatable enough to what users were creating, without being so farfetched that it would lose believability.
Goals
• Create an entire brand for AJ the astronaut.
• Make a multi funnel series of faux products using the branding that could be used to education users on AWeber's product.
My Solution
After pitching various concept, the one chosen to represent a brand for AJ was "One Galaxy Over"; a travel blog and podcast themed website and storefront with merchandise and online purchasable guides to help fellow space travels from their first to the hundredth excursion through the stars.
The brand concept was in line with AJ as a character but would maintain an honest, tastefully designed approach that would reflect how other users might set up their own product.
The design material for this brand would need to include logo, color, typography, and mock web pages that would include a blog home page, an individual blog page, and a store front,
Logo
The client agreed with the direction but wanted to see added fire elements to the brand mark. With the client in agreement for the direction and the revisions in mind, I begin a refinement phase, adding in small details such as the catfishing curled whiskters and using the fins of the fish to donate flames.
Throughout the refinement stage, the client was able to see their vision take shape and began to gravitate towards one option over another; the fish moving forwards with frevor and energy.
Exploration
Exploration began by simply trying to find a style that was somewhere between the cartoonish character design that is AJ and real branding a user might see on an actual product. Many options were discussed and many went through multiple iterations to get a tone and feel that was just right.
Results
A simple, vector logo with silhouetted illustrations was chosen and with it a color pallette, typography, and spacing were established.
Mock Pages
With the core branding complete, the mock web pages would need to be designed. Using Blog designs that were popular, I designed a series of web pages to be used for the marketing and educational material of the project.
Homepage
Blog Post
Overview
Email Series
At it's core, the One Galaxy Over project had always been a way to instruct users on how to use AWeber's email marketing tool. With Aweber's email design feature, I designed several emails and email series for the faux brand.
Email Sign Up
Blog Post Email
Digtial Store Coupon
Email Series - Graphic Assets
The Result?
Increased Product Awareness and Adaption
Through the use of the faux brand "One Galaxy Over" users were able to get a better understanding of how a brand could adapt email marketing into their marketing tool kit by seeing a brand go step-by-step through the process with a product. This "leading by example" approach saw an increase in awareness by users and resulted in a 7% increase of email series being created.