How a branding system and landing page can reflect a young startup’s vision and values.
Context:
Contract between Cal Poly Iter8 and Yardy Shoes Role: UX Design and Branding Project Manager Team: Nicole Borden (PM), Megan Miyamoto, Abby Yue, Chloe Wu
Can't wait to see it? ↳ Check out our branding system here ↗ ↳ And check out our landing page prototype here ↗
Background
Yardy makes kid’s shoes that extend as kids grow
Yardy, an innovative startup founded by Cal Poly student Zander Sheffield, is dedicated to addressing the evolving needs of children’s feet with its unique shoe product. Designed to accommodate the growth of children’s feet, Yardy offers an extendable shoe solution that seamlessly adjusts as their little feet develop. By providing parents with a cost-effective and time-saving footwear option, Yardy ensures children always wear shoes that fit comfortably.
Yardy needs a branding system and landing page that reflect their values
At the time of our contract, Yardy was at pivotal points in their journey as a startup, competing in startup competitions and presenting to VC’s. It was time for a branding system and sample landing page to show investors. Yardy wanted branding that reflected the value they bring to the table, and wanted a landing page to quickly explain the shoe to stakeholders.
Contract Deliverables
1. Develop a comprehensive branding system
Encompasses all aspects of Yardy’s identity, including logo design, color palette, typography, and visual elements. This system will ensure consistency and cohesiveness across the brand, creating a strong and recognizable brand presence.
2. Design a landing page
Design an engaging and visually appealing website landing page that captures the essence of Yardy’s brand.
Research - 1
We interviewed Yardy’s founder to understand the brand
The purpose of this interview was to better understand the founder’s overarching vision for the brand and determine their expectations regarding the visual representation of their brand. By gathering this crucial information, we were able to develop a clearer understanding of the target audience and design with their specific needs, goals, and pain points in mind. This approach enabled us to address any shortcomings in the previous branding and website, ensuring an effective solution moving forward.
Yardy wants to be seen as simple, affordable, and dependable
These three adjectives kept coming up in our interview, especially the word simple.
Saving parents time & money, and providing kids with better fitting shoes are chief values
Yardy has a larger set of values shown above, but these two were of chief importance.
Yardy’s target audience is middle-class mothers of children ages 1-5 years old
Yardy is targeting the middle class because they “tend to be most willing to try new product designs.”
Research - 2
We performed Market Research and Moodboarding
Based on our initial interview, we gathered inspiration for potential branding ideas and directions.
Each team member researched competing kids shoe brands and collected screenshots of existing solutions. Additionally, team members collected data on industry trends, target audiences, and competitors. I had team members present their findings, and we synthesized key takeaways into a single FigJam.
We followed a similar program for moodboarding: Each team member created a mood board with logos, typography, illustrations, and more, offering valuable concepts for Yardy’s branding. I had the team combine moodboards by starring items of interest on teammates’ moodboards.
After running the moodboards and market research by our client, we started drafting brand elements. Each team member was instructed to brainstorm 3 logo concepts, 2 color palettes, and 2 typefaces. Upon examining everyone’s ideas as a group, we came up with 4 categories for our designs: Clean, Illustrative, Playful, and Loud...
Combining ideas
We combined all our different ideas together for 2 iterations until we had a large board full of “Frankensteined” brand element ideas. We voted on our favorite elements as a team and combined them into our final set of brand element ideas...
Ideation - UX
We performed crazy eights to come up with ideas
After reviewing our market research as a group, we performed crazy eights to come up with a large number of landing page layouts and features in a short period of time.
We decided on the following key features...
A live product carousel showcasing available items in the Yardy collection.
A shoe features section highlighting the unique attributes and benefits of Yardy shoes.
A testimonial section highlighting customers’ appreciation for the brand and products
And implemented them in LoFi and MidFi wireframes...
Design System
Simple, playful, dependable
From our brand elements we picked playful colors, clean and friendly typefaces, and simple illustrations to emphasize the brands playful, dependable, and simple identity.
A clean and friendly logo
From our brand element ideation, we ran with this bubble letter logo design as it feels playful and friendly, but in its vectorized form it also feels solid and high quality.
Components that mix hand drawn and clean lines
Check out our full branding system here...
Landing Page Prototype
01
An above the fold that screams Yardy!
Taking inspiration from a children’s book spread in our moodboard, I designed an above the fold that is loud and playful. We also added a shoe category carousel with playful illustrations.
Press play ↑
02
A playful proposition
Skittering feet playfully guide the viewer along a journey through Yardy’s unique value proposition and shoe features.
Press play ↑
03
A heartfelt testimonial
The testimonial section boasts a scrap-book and hand-drawn feel combined with Yardy’s blue shades to emphasize trust and genuineness.
Zander Sheffield, the founder of Yardy, loved our work and was filled with joy when we showed him the final branding system and landing page prototype. I’d say the project was a success!
Communication is vital when design styles differ
At the start of managing this project, I quickly learned that designers can have drastically different styles, and combining those styles into a cohesive brand identity can prove difficult. My hypothesis is that as you increase the number of designers, grunt work gets done faster but conceptual work slows unless all the designers have a level of homogeneity and compatibility in their design styles. Good, clear, and honest communication were the best solutions we could find to conflicts in design styles throughout this process.
