Our Creative Director/CEO, Arlyna, has seen these changes and trends through her years in Shanghai and having raised twins. Specifically, the baby diaper market has seen significant expansion from the limited choice between Huggies, Pampers, Goo.N, and Mamy Poko. She remembers when it was hard to find good quality diapers, and even the well-established brands still don't deliver. Nowadays, the market is not just dominated by big brands but also filled with other brands creating a buzz with their products. 

When we were approached by Winsun, a major Guangdong manufacturer, to redesign the signature diaper brand, Dress, we took the challenge! With its white and green motif, the DRESS brand, founded in 2005, garnered brand loyalty, especially in Chinese Tier 2 and 3 cities.

As with our other projects, we go through a design process and deep dive into the industry. Our process for guiding a unified, consistent brand roll-out covers 4 phases of a project.

This first process is critical in the early stage of design, entailing a lot of research into the market, the trends, brand audits, business objectives, target personas, and more.

On top of the research, we also wanted to hit the ground running through our field trips to a few sample cities, visiting primary offline mother and baby stores, supermarkets, franchise stores, and shop-in-shops. Information gathering does not limit to just looking at what's on the shelves but also looking into:

• shelf-presence and shelf space
• a look at the competitors' designs and USPs
• talking to sales staff about buying preferences
• checking price points

Taking what we learned during the first phase, we presented the findings to the stakeholders in a workshop where we explored and discussed the viability of the DRESS brand, brand positioning, brand essence, and SWOT analysis.

The brand's competition in the market is high, with many new brands coming into the arena to compete. We also found that the need to appeal to younger parents is a significant factor in their buying consumption. 

The DRESS brand is also relatively mature in the market and has demonstrated brand loyalty. Hence, our focus was to emphasize the brand's core value through the innovation that Winsun has put into the product itself and the advanced manufacturing process, topped with the quality and reliable source of raw materials.

Part of the takeaway from this phase was redefining the product range into a more apparent hierarchy of DRESS brand's offerings with different price points and features. There was no harmonized look across the board, with differences between each product type not clearly differentiated or identified. The product line was convoluted since the messaging had no signature DRESS identity.

Because there was already an established loyalty to the DRESS brand, we optimized the brand logo to maintain the original recognition. As another approach, we provided the stakeholders with a totally redesigned logo version.

We wanted the brand story to be visible to the audience for the design concepts while creating a harmonized look throughout the different categories and price points through distinct and subtle differences in the design.

The design concepts were the workshop's results in Phase 2 of the process. We created 3 directions to present to the client, each with different touchpoints. 

Direction 1: 

Focuses on the emotional aspect, creating a warm feeling that connects to a mother's love for her baby. Simple yet touching visuals differentiate the different stages of a baby's life from the different diaper sizes.

Direction 2:

Putting innovation at the forefront of the messaging to highlight the unique absorbency properties and quality natural materials used to manufacture the diapers.

Direction 3: 

Brand story plays an essential aspect in the design, using the literal meaning of the brand name to extend the brand values. We used bright colors that would pop on the shelf and grab attention.

Our additional design exploration covered different on-trend concepts and a departure from the DRESS look of white and green.

We have more stories to share. Don't hesitate to drop us an email info@yaean.com to learn more.