MADE IN CORPUS CHRISTI
Corpus Christi Beach Graphics
Made in Corpus Christi is a brand that is dedicated to building community pride by working with local makers, artists and anyone in the creative field. They sell things such as t-shirts, decals, mugs, candles, stationary, hats and much more. As an intern for the brand, I often get a first-hand look at what customers are interested in based on their purchases, or just by talking to them. One thing they all have in common, is their love for their city and the beach town lifestyle. The brand had not previously had many beach inspired designs, so I took the opportunity create a series of designs based on local residents love for the beach, that include a surfer graphic, pelican graphic, and a palm tree graphic. While designing these, I kept it simple so that it could be used for multiple types of items such as stationary, posters, t-shirts, tote bags, as well as wooden magnets.
Context and Challenge
Project background description:
While I knew the brand needed beach designs, the challenge was creating not only something customers would love, but also something the owner herself would be proud to sell.
Goals and objectives:
The brand needed a wider variety of style of design. Made in Corpus Christi has a wide variety of customers, so it’s important to try to have more than one style available. What a Millennial might buy versus what a Gen X customer might buy can greatly vary.
Process
The first step I took was to create a customer persona and tailor my design toward that specific target market. Through research and personal insight as a millennial myself, I created a mood-board that includes the target personas likes, favorite colors, hobbies, typography, beach inspiration and popular millennial art trends. From there I chose 3 beach related directions to take in order to create a series of designs and I drew sketches and then vectored them. In order to prep these designs for a laser machine to create magnets, I also had to figure out a way to convert these graphics into solid black.
Solution
My result was a minimal approach that would easily transfer to multiple types of merch.
Measured Results
End result was very successful and resulted in The Bend Magazine featuring me as Instagram of the week, as well as people placing several pre-orders for t-shirts and selling out of items at the spring Loca for Local market.
