The brand development of a women's fashion concept established in 1995, aligning its image with casual and modern Scandinavian style.

Brand Development / Research / Concept Design / Fashion Collection Design

Project
Fashion Concept Development
Senior Lead Designer
Duration 12 months
2018

About

Established in 1995, Your FACE is a Finnish women’s fashion brand offering stylish clothing and accessories for everyday life, work, and special occasions, prioritizing comfort and fit. The brand faced challenges due to a lack of clear vision, leading to mixed messaging. I led the revitalization of the concept image, creating a new visual direction and designing refreshed fashion collections.

Design Process

My Role

Lead Designer: Responsible of Customer Research, Competitive & SWOT Analysis, Concept Design, Fashion Design, Iterative Product Development, Proto sampling, Usability testing, Marketing brief, Collection Presentations.

Credits to my team: Concept manager Luisa Laine, Tiina Kanninen, Sari Laaksonen, Suvi Turtiainen, Maggie Xu, Ealina Yao, Nancy Zhang, and Anna Zhang.

The Challenge

Redefining Brand Vision to Attract New Audiences

Your FACE, launched in 1995, has been a staple in Finnish women's fashion for over two decades, catering to busy women who value quality and trendy solutions. However, the brand struggled with a lack of vision, resulting in mixed messaging, poor financial performance, and an outdated image. To revitalize its appeal, Your FACE aimed to modernize its identity while attracting a younger, trend-focused audience without alienating its loyal customer base.

Achieving this required a delicate balance of updating branding elements and product offerings to resonate with both demographics. Careful strategic planning was essential to create a fresh, modern collection that satisfies the diverse preferences of existing and new customers. Successfully navigating these challenges is crucial for the brand's rebranding efforts.

Design Process

Understanding Users Through Fashion and UX Design

In both fashion concept development and UX design, the process follows a similar path. It begins with in-depth research, including competitive and SWOT analysis, along with empathizing and identifying the core problem. Empathy maps and personas are created to understand the user, and mood boards help visualize the concept. From there, business objectives are set, and insights from previous projects are reviewed. The process emphasizes collaborative design work, cross-team meetings, and presentations to stakeholders, ultimately involving the sales teams for final alignment.

Business Requirements

From Vision to Reality: Strategies for Re-Launching with a Contemporary Focus

For the re-launch, the company set ambitious goals to align with the younger, contemporary demographic as it expanded to new stores. As the Senior Lead Designer, I played a key role in shaping the visual strategy. Several steps were considered in the process:

Conducting thorough market research to better understand the target audience's preferences and behaviors.
Revamping the product offering to align with current trends and appeal to younger consumers while maintaining the brand’s quality.
Enhancing the brand’s digital presence and exploring influencer collaborations to increase visibility.
Continuously gathering feedback from sales teams, customer surveys, and social media interactions data to adapt strategies in real-time.

Brand Research

Mapping the Market: Deep Insights into Our Customer Personas

To better understand our customer base, I conducted comprehensive research that included market, competitive, and SWOT analysis. I employed profiling methods similar to persona creation and empathy mapping to build detailed customer profiles, focusing on their preferences and needs. These profiles helped align our global team and stakeholders on the motivations of our target audience, refining our strategic approach for more effective targeting.

Market research

Inspiration to Execution: Crafting a Cohesive Collection

The iterative collection design process begins with comprehensive trend analysis and market research, essential for identifying emerging styles and consumer preferences. Inspiration trips to fashion capitals like London, Paris, and Shanghai, along with visits to fabric fairs such as Premier Vision, enrich our understanding of global trends. These insights are meticulously compiled to create a cohesive concept for the entire season, resulting in mood boards for each of the 14 collection drops per year. Each drop features its own theme, color palette, and trend focus, ensuring that every mini-collection resonates with our target audience and aligns with market demand.

Design Process

Continuous Improvement: Why Feedback-Driven Design is Key

After initial design discussions with the team, we progressed to sketching and iterative prototyping—crucial steps that ensure our ideas evolve based on real user feedback. Rigorous testing at each stage allows us to refine our products, leading to a minimum viable product that's primed for production. By validating designs with stakeholders throughout the process, we maintain alignment and transparency, which fosters collaboration and drives progress. This iterative approach, which includes gathering feedback from launched collections, is essential for continuous improvement. As the Senior Lead Designer, I successfully managed three distinct development cycles simultaneously, ensuring that our designs are not only innovative but also market-ready.

From Concept to Clarity: Creating Instruction Sheets

After our initial design discussions, we move swiftly into sketching and iterative prototyping, vital for translating ideas into tangible concepts. This phase mirrors the UX design process, beginning with quick hand-drawn sketches that allow for rapid exploration of ideas. By selecting key looks for each collection early on, we ensure that our vision remains focused and aligned with market trends. This iterative approach culminates in the creation of detailed instruction sheets for each style, facilitating clear communication and smooth production, ultimately leading to successful collections.

Collaborative Validation: Ensuring Design Alignment

Throughout every phase, our designs are validated through cross-team collaborations and stakeholder meetings, essential for maintaining alignment and driving progress. As the lead designer, I actively presented initial mood boards, color themes, fabrics, and key looks during these discussions. By substantiating design decisions with trend analysis, sales data from previous collections, and customer feedback, I ensured that each choice was strategically aligned with our project goals and user needs. This collaborative validation process not only fosters a shared vision but also enhances the overall effectiveness of our designs.

Prototyping

Prototyping Insights: Identifying and Improving Usability Issues

Throughout the development cycle, we conducted several rounds of prototype testing with fitting models sourced outside the company, which were essential for ensuring our final product met high-quality standards. To further validate the fit, we also conducted in-house fittings to ensure that the garments provided an ideal experience for a diverse customer base and various body types. Testing is one of the most critical steps in the design process, allowing us to gather comprehensive feedback and make informed adjustments. We focused on key areas during testing, including:

Usability: Evaluating whether the fit aligned with our specifications for comfort and wearability.
Functionality: Confirming that every component served its intended purpose effectively.
3D Silhouette: Ensuring that the garment maintained the desired shape and movement for optimal user experience.
Coordination: Assessing how well items could be mixed and matched to create cohesive outfits that appeal to our target audience.
Inspiration: Verifying that the design was on-trend and evoked a sense of excitement, making it attractive to fashion-conscious consumers.

The initial prototype aimed to identify critical usability issues that needed immediate resolution. Subsequent iterations focused on refining the aspects highlighted during earlier tests, enabling us to improve the design progressively.

From Concept to Conversion: How Sales Presentations Boost Growth

After extensive rounds of prototyping and usability testing, we shifted focus to Sales presentations are crucial for aligning design with business goals, turning creative work into tangible results.

As Senior Lead Designer, I ensured:

High-Quality Samples: Samples were flawless and delivered on time, building buyer confidence and boosting order placements, key to expanding retail presence.
Cohesive Visuals: Every element, from styling to music, was curated to elevate brand perception, aligning with our goal of positioning the brand as premium.
Strategic Marketing: Coordinating with marketing ensured a seamless launch, driving traffic and enhancing visibility across channels.

This careful orchestration directly contributed to business growth and stakeholder satisfaction.

Building a Strong Visual Identity Across Touchpoints

The next critical step in our rebranding was crafting detailed marketing briefs that aligned with our brand objectives. Collaborating closely with the marketing team and Art Director, I led strategy meetings to ensure our goals were clear and cohesive. I also developed Style Guides and defined the Visual Brand Identity for YourFACE, ensuring that the brand aesthetic remained consistent and unified across all platforms, strengthening our market presence and overall brand recognition.

Seamless Transition: Empowering Teams through Training

The rebranding process culminated in a presentation of the refreshed collection to over 100 store personnel. As the Senior Lead Designer, I led this initiative over two days, equipping the team with insights into key trends, styling tips, and fabric care instructions. This training ensured a seamless transition to the new brand identity and empowered staff to confidently convey the brand vision to customers, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Streamlining Deliverables for a Successful Rebranding

During the rebranding process, I played a pivotal role in exporting assets and packaging deliverables, ensuring high-quality execution and organization of files for seamless collaboration. This meticulous approach facilitated continuity in the project, resulting in a timely delivery that aligned with our late fall 2018 launch date. My efforts not only revitalized the brand but also helped develop a cohesive collection that resonated with the target audience, successfully navigating the challenges of a condensed timeline.

Results

The rebranding phase was a pivotal moment in our journey, marked by significant growth and positive feedback. With the spring 2018 collection, we experienced a remarkable turnaround, culminating in a re-launch that saw a remarkable 47% increase in sales within the first two months. This success was not incidental but the result of meticulous research and analysis, where we adeptly balanced the allure of the old with the freshness of the new.

Our new brand identity received widespread praise, particularly for its colors, key looks, and clear vision, which resonated with our audience and fostered a sense of connection. The introduction of comprehensive style guides brought coherence to our brand marketing efforts, offering customers a clearer understanding of our brand ethos and forging stronger bonds with our audience.

In my role, I spearheaded the creation of a robust portfolio of key items, strategically curated to meet market demand and customer preferences. These items flew off the shelves within days, underscoring the success of our rebranding efforts. Additionally, I introduced new strategic wardrobe classics that not only boosted sales but also laid the foundation for sustained growth across seasons.

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