How our header concept helped tie together multiple digital and social aims while building The Body Shop UK blog website.
Brands have strict coms rules. No surprise.
Of course it’s great to work on projects for these guys, but it can also be creatively constrained.
The challenge with developing The Body Shop UK blog website was all about how far you could develop their rules.
The TBS social and content teams wanted an on-brand design which stretched the guidelines to provide users with an environment which was both familiar and edgy. And this was our biggest challenge.
- Generally blog design should be ‘lite-touch’, to allow the content to dominate… That’s why visitors visit.
- It absolutely had to work seamlessly alongside, indeed underneath, existing TBS web portals, dominated by the eCommerce site.
- But it needed to be fresh, friendly, accessible and fun with a hint of the activism the brand is known for.
- Finally it had to connect to core product messages and have real beauty credibility.
Eventually, and the best things are rarely the first things one thinks of, we hit on an idea to use real life TBS products and the heart motif central to their brand, to develop a dramatic, unrestricted and relevant blog header which achieved all of this, and perhaps a little more.
Step 1
Find a suitable TBS product. This loose powder foundation was perfect.
Step 2
Get a lot of it… we mean… a LOT.
Step 3
Think ‘beauty with heart’ and have fun…
Step 4
Good start, but it needs more ‘something’… Ahhh, that’s more like it…
Step 5
Few more tweaks and then make it match brand colour guidelines…
Step 6
Bring it together with the rest of the site…
http://beautyblog.thebodyshop.co.uk