Soft Brand

For my final Design Thesis at Washington University, as an exploration of and meditation on minimal branding,  I developed a "soft branded" apparel collection, complete with a brand book, various touch points including stationery and business cards, and a minimalist packaging line. 

Inspired by the generic items sold in grocery stores & pharmacies, as well as the relatively unbranded movement in “normcore” and high fashion aesthetic, I sought to develop a clothing brand that would exist with neither a name nor a logo. 

The brand would revere the quality of the clothing, and the lack of need for investment in branding and marketing would manifest in the clothing quality without raising the prices for the consumer. 

The packaging and greater brand design would reflect that intention with as minimal an intervention as possible in the consumer experience. The brand would succeed mainly through word of mouth, and the namelessness of it would attract an air of luxury. 

Branding, Packaging, Book Design

Besides being characterized by a specific typographic aesthetic and an overall appreciation for minimalism and the materiality of the object, my brand identity is mainly characterized by a system of contrast: the contrast between the object, and all the content being placed on the object. 

In addition to packaging prototypes and business papers, I also developed a brand book that compiled all the do's and don'ts of my hypothetical branding system.