Magdalyn Foley
Underline
|| fall 2018
We were given free rein over a project -- whatever we wanted to do. With three other designers, we imagined a company called Underline, a hygiene company focused on eliminating the stigma around men using hygiene products that are needlessly marketed towards women. On top of this, we wanted to address the 'pink tax'. Annually, women pay more for their hygiene products than men... and for what? A floral bottle? Underline challenges the notion that pink shampoo is for women and black is for men -- the notion that face masks are only for women -- that a man can't use moisturizer.
Our concept map (above) shows what we envision for Underline. It shows what we stand for and what we want to be. We created this map at the beginning of our project to help us form a foundation to build upon. This helped us to stay on track and remember the goals we set from the beginning.
We did a lot of research to back up our goals. A lot of that was online research, but this research helped us to conduct a few studies where we gathered information to help fuel our direction. We were targeting people who identified as women as well as cis-gender straight males. However, these demographics would only take up a few of the projected users of Underline products.
Our brand language is personal and straight-forward, like a sassy friend, but not overbearing or rude. We integrated this into our advertisements, which would be placed around populated areas as posters, billboards, and other signage, as well as on our instagram page and website.
Social media was a huge branch of this project because we wanted Underline to be more than just a hygiene company. We planned on using the company to do outreach, to teach people more about good hygiene and skincare, and to encourage people of all kinds to be kinder to themselves and their bodies.
We sent out a few forms to men on campus and discovered that most of them didn't use a single skin care product -- not even just washing their face. In that same study, though, we discovered that those same men are either curious about trying products and just don't know where to start, or they just don't see any use in them... after all, face masks are for women, right?
On the flip side, forms aimed at women showed that they did enjoy using products, but that they hated the 'pink tax'. A lot of women we polled actually preferred to use mens products, because they could spend less money on essentially the same products.
