How do you cultivate a successful brand identity? FUNG Tea is a wellness brand created with the goal of exploring that question.
Background
FUNG was an educational project created by a team of myself and one other student. Our goal was to build out a brand with a real product, branded website, and promotional content that all fit within the intended market.
Defining The Brand
The first step in this process was coming up with an initial idea for a brand. After recently reading about the health benefits of certain fungi, the idea of a mushroom supplement-infused tea was something I was excited to explore. This began by defining the values and mission statement of the brand, analyzing the competitive market for other mushroom supplement-based products, and spending some time researching mushrooms to solidify ideas for our product line.
Competitive Analysis
Audience Research
To establish a target demographic, we sought to understand who might be interested in a brand like FUNG. After looking at similar brands and who their products appeal to, my focus narrowed to a specific group: active millennials. Research of millennial health habits revealed a clear insight: millennials value low-cost self care products.
Iteration & Exploration
With an audience narrowed down, focus shifted to the design side of the project. To make FUNG into a well-rounded brand, there would be a variety of final deliverables.
Branding
Before creating the actual products, FUNG's visual identity had to be established. The FUNG branding guidelines were created in Figma and aim to guide the creation of the rest of the FUNG products, both physical and digital.
The Product
The first product created for FUNG was the most important: the tea itself. FUNG is a mushroom-supplement based tea, so lots of time was spent researching the effects of different mushroom wellness supplements and pairing them with various tea flavors. The supplements in FUNG are central to the product, and the designs intend to convey that visually.
The Digital Experience
Ensuring a pleasant digital experience is a must for any modern brand. With a focus on UI and user experience, the FUNG Tea web and mobile site prototypes take advantage of Figma's interactive components to demonstrate the flow of browsing for and purchasing tea online.
The FUNG Website
Mobile Website
Promo Video
Last but certainly not least came the FUNG Tea promotional video. This video was edited in After Effects using almost entirely stock footage; it serves to really solidify what FUNG is about, and showcase the lifestyle behind the brand.
Reflection
This project taught me a lot about branding, and gave me the chance to branch out across multiple creative mediums. It was really exciting to be able to work not only on the UI side of things, but also the graphic design, strategy, label design, video editing, general narrative and marking campaign for this brand. As someone who has usually focused in one of the specific disciplines, taking a more holistic approach to this project has further developed my perspective on creating a well-rounded product for a specific audience.
