Meeting the Designer and Initial Thoughts

Two days ago, I met my allocated Furniture and Product Design student who has been tasked to create a product all around the idea of rituals. On first to speaking with him I found out that one important ritual in his daily life is the sculpting and upkeep of his beard and this is what he based his product around, with the added inspiration of his upbringing of always working with natural materials and being a hands-on, stereotypically "manly" guy who values manual labour. The product itself is a toolbox which contains everything one might need to maintain clean-cut facial hair and so this brings together elements of traditional ideas of manhood, as well as gives an idea of who the product might be marketed at and some elements which would make sense to weave into the branding. Some elements in particular were picked out by asking the student for some key words they associated with their product, which have been visualised in the image below.

In the two days since meeting with him, I have spent my time carrying out initial research to gain inspiration for the direction the brand might go down, this has mainly included browsing Pinterest and creating a board full of images and designs which give me an indication of what is already on the market as well as spark ideas for what masculine branding elements could possibly be utilised. Some screenshots of the Pinterest board can be seen below, or alternatively browsed here.

Within my research I looked at a variety of examples of masculine branding styles, including looking at how barber shop businesses have carried this out as it relates heavily to the product. One thing noticed was that there seemed to be a few routes that companies and designers had gone down. The first is the 'hipster' route, as it is commonly known that beards have become something of a hipster identifier and so some brands used imagery which, whilst still masculine, would appeal to the younger and 'cooler' consumer as it combined elements such as tattoos and skulls. The second route is the more 'gentlemanly' and 'sophisticated' branding, in which traditional elements such as using old fashioned imagery of people with facial hair are used, it also seems to be combined with simple packaging in dark colours paired with a clean looking font. Finally, the third route is a more 'hands-on', 'nature based' approach which would appeal to a consumer which is a bit more rough and rugged than the sophistact and less concerned than the hipster about looking cool. Within this category there is a lot more natural imagery and a focus on earthy colours. For the new brand, in order to come up with the direction it goes down there needs to be consideration as to who the consumer is as well as what the values, essence, personality and proposition are going to be, as this will largely dictate how the branding will be approached.