Retail Scale-Up

Brand strategy, identity system and ecommerce experience for a new consumer brand designed to help customers discover experiences by vibe rather than category. Built from scratch for a millennial audience, the project combined brand creation, illustration, UX and ecommerce design into a single customer journey.

The brief

Following a period of significant change in the experiences market, the business identified an opportunity to reach a younger audience with a different approach to discovery. Rather than browsing experiences through traditional categories, customers would explore cities, atmospheres and occasions — finding experiences based on the type of day, evening or weekend they wanted to have.

There was no existing brand, proposition or customer experience to build from. The challenge was to create a distinctive consumer brand and ecommerce journey from the ground up, one capable of standing apart from established competitors while feeling relevant to a new generation of customers.

The illustration system

The central creative decision was to build the brand around a bespoke illustration system rather than photography. Illustration gave the brand an immediate visual identity that no competitor could replicate, and allowed us to represent cities in a way that felt genuinely characterful rather than relying on stock imagery of landmarks.

I'd developed an illustration style for earlier work — a handful of characters and scenes that had never been used — and used that as the starting point to build a completely new system for this brand. The cities, the scenes and the icon sets were all new work developed specifically for this brief.

The illustration system gave the brand a visual identity that felt genuinely handmade — the opposite of the polished, generic aesthetic of most experience platforms.

Character illustration

Developed from earlier character studies into a full cast of illustrated figures — diverse, energetic and distinctly non-corporate. Used throughout the brand to give it warmth and personality without relying on photography.

City scene illustration

Bespoke illustrated scenes for each city in the product range — capturing the specific character and vibe of each location rather than generic skyline imagery. Birmingham, London, Manchester and beyond each had their own distinct visual treatment.

Location icon system

A complete set of illustrated icons referencing the character of each city — used for navigation, filtering and wayfinding throughout the ecommerce experience. Instantly recognisable, distinctive and consistent with the wider brand aesthetic.

Brand identity

The visual identity was built to feel urban and characterful — type-led, confident, with an edge that referenced street culture and independent creative communities rather than the mainstream leisure market. The palette was deliberately darker and grittier than the typical experience booking aesthetic, which tends toward bright, clean and optimistic.

The illustration system was the primary brand device — it appeared across the website, marketing materials, social content and email campaigns, building a consistent visual world that made the brand immediately recognisable across every touchpoint.

Ecommerce and UX

The ecommerce experience was structured around the discovery-by-vibe proposition — which required a different information architecture to a standard product catalogue. Users needed to be able to browse by feel, by city, by occasion and by energy level, not just by product category.

Navigation and filtering designed around vibe and location rather than standard product taxonomy.
Product pages designed to sell the experience rather than just list the details — tone of voice, imagery and layout all working together to convey the character of each offering.
Mobile-first design throughout — the target audience was primarily browsing and booking on mobile.
Illustration deployed at every stage of the journey — from landing page through to booking confirmation — maintaining brand character across the full experience.

The outcome

The project delivered a complete consumer brand, illustration system and ecommerce experience built around a fundamentally different approach to discovery. By organising the experience around mood, location and occasion rather than conventional product categories, the platform created a more engaging and intuitive journey for its target audience.

The bespoke illustration system became the defining feature of the brand, creating recognition and consistency across web, email, social and marketing activity while helping the business establish a distinctive position within a crowded market. Every element of the system was designed to reinforce the same idea: discovery should feel personal, local and characterful rather than transactional.

More broadly, the project demonstrated the value of aligning brand strategy, customer experience and ecommerce design around a single organising principle. When the proposition, visual identity and user journey all support the same idea, the customer experience becomes clearer, more memorable and more commercially effective.

Although the client remains confidential, the project remains one of the strongest examples in my portfolio of building a brand, design system and digital experience simultaneously from the ground up.