ONLOOKER Brand Design

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Brand Story

"ONLOOKER" is a 15s original short video social networking product, which incubated by MIUI Short Video Team of Xiaomi. Through a small video help the users to record and share interesting moments in their lives, and show the talents, creativity, interests, become a fashion icon! Every video audience votes, and everyone has a chance to be hot.

Andy warhol, the most thoughtful and playful star artist of 20th century art and advocate of pop art, once said:

"In the future, everyone will be famous in 15 minutes", that is, the law of fame in 15 minutes.

More than half a century later, the short video product tells us: 15s is enough!

Why would you want to be average when you can shine and be a star? That may be why the short video product is on the way -- people are eager to show themselves.

The project started in September 2016 and the product launched in APP market about four months later. As you know, there are Kuai and Musical.ly and other popular competitors at this time. Therefore, our task is to create a strong visual recognition image to quickly gain market users recognition.

Through brainstorming, we designed hundreds of sketches, including graphic logo, Chinese and English logotype, and App icon. Through illustration, animation, 3D and other design forms to interpret and convey the connotation, metaphor and emotional stand of the brand.

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Our Challenge

When the project kicked off, only the Kuai and Musical.ly were well known to the public. Our core challenge was to design a brand logo that could register a trademark and reflect the product features. And for the most of us, we want it to be a Fashion Brand like Uber, Airbnb...

Obviously, after sketching hundreds of designs, we came up with nearly 10 almost perfect ones, and eventually the person in charge chose the current logo.

The circle with a gap symbolizes hugging and opening, showing that we welcome all kinds of people who like to play and show. The main app idea lies in bringing people together by matching their interests with others, and to keep their eyes on the colorful world. Lovely eyes reflect the naughtiness and the curiosity of the world. The whole design is light, rounded and has an affinity, which is the primary emotional attitude we want to convey.

Include the logo of TIKTOK and Weshi launched after ONLOOKER, their design technique and forms all appears in our sketch, including the rebrand of MoMo.

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LOGOTYPE DESIGN

Logotype design of Chinese and English follow three basic principles: appropriateness, readability and visual beauty.

All type designed in an equally square container, but the font spacing and stroke weight are not exactly same, and the visual center of the font is not exactly the physical center. Adjust the font spacing and thickness according to the size and number of strokes. The larger type’s stroke will be a bit thinner and the spacing slightly larger to ensure the tight-fitting and weight balance of the whole font.

Both Chinese and English designs adopt the design method of same stroke, same circular angle and same arc. While ensuring the overall consistency, the overall design is round and light, which is in line with the characteristics of youthful, sunny, vibrant, energetic and people-friendly.

中、英文字体logo皆遵循了适合性、可读性、视觉美感三个基本原则。

在等大的正方形容器内设计，但字体间距和笔画重量并非完全一致，字体的视觉中心也并非完全的物理中心。

根据字面大小、笔画多少来适当调节字体间距和笔画粗细，字面大的笔画会略细一些，间距略大一些，来保证整个字体的松紧度和重量感的平衡。

中文、英文设计都采用等线体的设计方式，采用相同的圆角、弧线设计规则，在保证整体一致性的同时，使整体设计圆润、轻巧，符合围观品牌青春、阳光、活力亲民的特点。

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Design summary

Overall, this is a failed branding building.

First of all, we got the key words "young, fashion, sunshine, positive" at begin. We hoped that our users were such a group of people，and branding goes further and further in that direction. Unfortunately, our product is a pretty conflicted and confusing product because of product content and target users don't match. During the cold start period of the project, the product mainly relies on fetching content from other apps, which is indeed our target content. However, our app distribution channels and promotion channels are "middle-aged greasy dudes" and "middle-aged housewives", which are not our target users. However, our team didn’t or cann’t change our promotion channels. Gradually, our APP was occupied by various uncle and aunt who walked dogs and Shared their babies.

Secondly, after discovering the contradiction between target users and platform content, we didn’t adjust our brand tone in a timely manner, so that "new target users" were not interested in our brand.

In the end, I think as designers, we failed to play a good driving role in design side, including participate in ploting operational activities and adjusting of product direction.

总体来说，这是一次失败的品牌塑造。

首先，在产品初期的brainstorming中，我们得出的结论是“年轻、时尚、阳光、积极向上”这些关键词，我们希望我们的用户是这样一群人，因此，品牌塑造便朝着这个方向不断深入。

遗憾的是，在产品内容和目标用户上，我们是一个相当矛盾和纠结的产品。项目冷启动时期，产品主要靠抓取内容，抓取的内容确实是我们的目标内容。然而，我们的应用分发渠道和推广渠道却是以红米为主的“中年油腻大叔”和“中年家庭妇女”，这类原本并不是我们的目标用户。然而，团队并没有或者说没能够改变得了我们的推广渠道，渐渐地，我们的APP被各种遛狗、晒娃的大叔、大妈占领。

其次，在发现目标用户和平台内容的矛盾之后，我们没能及时的调整我们的品牌调性，导致“新的目标用户”对我们品牌并不感冒。

最后，我觉得作为设计师，我们没能很好地起到设计侧的推动力，包括运营活动的设计、产品方向的调整。