The Yarn Pit:
Branding a subscription-based knitting company
Scope: 1 Week • Individual • Mobile App • Conceptual
Not your granny's sweater!
When you think of someone knitting, who do you think of? What are they making?
THE BRIEF
Create a brand identity for a fictional knitting subscription service.
To capture a new audience, I needed to bring a young, fresh, and hip feeling to what is considered a traditional craft.
The Product
A monthly delivery service for knitting packs straight to your door with cool and modern designs. I was asked to prototype a mobile app including the onboarding, navigation, product display page, and article page for the brand.
I looked at unconventional products to help give a new perspective. DIY fashion experience with projects from easy to bodysuit.
Summary of Project and Problem
This was a concept project to give a fictional knitting subscription service a brand identity. There were no limitations, so to make this project more personal, I thought up unconventional products and considered a new perspective.
I needed to bring a fresh and hip feeling to what is regarded as a traditional craft.
My Responsibilities and Process
I followed the double diamond design process and included a few creative thinking and branding exercises.
Researched direct competitors and knitting trends
Defined the brand values through word mind mapping
Defined the personality through brand affinities
Named the brand by researching song titles
Created mood boards for inspiration and definition
Determined an accessible color palette
Created a style guide through typeface research
Iterated upon designs based on feedback
Tools
Pen and paper
Figma
Notion
Slack
Zoom
Keynote
Photoshop
Type-scale.com
Able: friction-free accessibility
Coolors (color picker)
Key Deliverables
- Hi-fi mobile prototype including 4 pages:
- Onboarding
Navigation
Product display page
- Article page (blog post)
- Brand values
Style guide
Mood boards
Presentation
Results
All fonts and colors are accessible. I believe I have brought something fresh and hip to the market according to the brand values. Scroll down to see!
Keep scrolling to read how it happened.
DISCOVER
Research and giving the brand a personality
What are the brand values?
I used a mind-mapping exercise to think of words to describe the values. The brand values helped give direction to each decision.
Brand Values
Creative but fashionable
Expressive but guided
Unhurried but stimulating
Challenging but rewarding
Cool but not pretentious
Researching ideas and competitors
I researched trends in knitting, competitors, and celebrities who have taken up knitting or have artistic hobbies.
YARN BOMBING
The creative approach and colorful patterns were attention-grabbing.
WOOL AND THE GANG
The critical competitor has given knitting a younger look and added hip hop influence to the name "Kool & the Gang."
Who would represent the brand?
I researched celebrities who have taken up knitting or have artistic hobbies and considered what car the brand would drive.
CARA DELAVINGE
The famous model is often found knitting backstage at fashion shows. Cara is the perfect combination of fun and cool.
VOLKSWAGON MICROBUS
Customizable and unique, the perfect representative. Unhurried but stimulating.
It's not about speed; it's about enjoying the process.
DEFINE
After discovering inspiration and developing the brand values, it's time to start defining.
Naming the Brand
Taking a little hippie and a little hip-hop influence, I looked to song titles for naming inspiration.
THE YARN PIT
(inspired by "Gravel Pit" by the Wu-Tang Clan)
Mood Boards
I created a collection of images that felt like the brand and put them together into a few mood boards.
The blue and white cloud patterns were eye-catching and memorable. Since clouds are fun, airy, and slow-moving, it seemed right.
Choosing Accessible Colors
I started with color samples from one of the mood board images. I would learn later that the blue and orange were too light and did not have enough contrast to be accessible. They were toned down in brightness to pass the contrast test.
The bright and happy colors were appropriate with the values: creative and expressive.
Image Selection
The onboarding image is of a young, cool man wearing a fashionable knitted hat. Pictures of unique people wearing unconventional knitted pieces such as balaclavas are used throughout the app. These images represent a combination of cool and fun but are also creative and fashionable.
Font Choices
- The futuristic, geometric, shape-based typeface "Avenir Next" is commonly used in mobile apps; I chose it because it is easy to read.
- The logo was a little more playful (to keep the young feeling) and a similar typeface called "Didact Gothic." There is also a thick puffy white outline around a few titles to reinforce the cloud theme and keep it fun.
Style guide and accessibility suggestions
DEVELOP
Sketching, Digital Wireframes, and Iterations
Sketching initial ideas
I drew some initial sketches to consider all of the necessary elements.
I forgot a few things and revised the low-fidelity wireframes later in Figma.
Moving to digital wireframes
Essential navigational items were laid out. The app needed to make sense before I could work on the UI design. As the fidelity increased, so did the detail and amount of information.
Onboarding iterations
- Text on photos is generally insufficient for accessibility. Clouds were added to create more contrast and contribute to the branding.
- Clouds were used in the background to soften the model's serious expression and to keep with the brand values: cool but not too cool.
V1 Lo-Fi Wireframe
V3 Hi-Fi Wireframe
V5 Final Wireframe
The onboarding page went up in fidelity quickly.
Product display page iterations
- The "quantity" drop-down wasn't a good solution, and the symbols were confusing. It changed to –1+.
- Spacing needed improvement again and again. Attention was put to hierarchy and typeface size as well as vertical spacing.
V3 Mid-Fi Wireframe
V4 Hi-Fi Wireframe
V5 Hi-Fi Wireframe
There were a lot of changes made to the Product Display Page.
DELIVER
The Prototype and Conclusions
Conclusions
The final design represents the brand's values.
Knitting has never looked so fun before!
The colors, fonts, and buttons are accessible.
Next Steps
- Add more content
- Confirm accessibility
- Start knitting!
Personal Learning Takeaways
After my first critique with colors, I learned that I had a lot of accessibility issues. I found this frustrating but also learned to check for this every time. In my research, I noticed a lot of websites and apps are inaccessible. It was challenging to find accessible combinations and still make them appealing.
The Prototype
Feel free to look around and scroll to see everything!
ALL OF THE FRAMES
Thank you for reading!
Selected Works
