Case Study
Sonic Blooms
VISUAL/UI
Overview
August 2024 - Present
After doing flowers for 8+ weddings and events, I'm making it official! This project is a combination of real branding and vision visuals for where I'd like this project.
Approach
Having fun
Visual assets are extensible and reusable across surfaces
1. Audience & Business Strategy
CHALLENGE
I first helped my best friend with flowers for her wedding in 2020 when she needed to drastically downsize to a micro-wedding. After successfully turning Trader Joes flowers into tabletop arrangements and bouquets, I was inspired to help others save money while still creating their dream aesthetic.
Eight weddings later, I've helped my friends save thousands of dollars and created increasingly complex bouquets, arrangements, and installations. While I don't plan on becoming a full-service florist anytime soon, I'd like to continue to help others do their own flowers using what I've learned. How can I scale my process to enable others to do the same on their own?
ACTIVITY
Reflecting on these experiences, I mapped out pain points with alternative options to better understand opportunities where I could connect with the right audience. Then, I spoke with a few of the friends I've helped to understand their journey and what worked well/didn't work with doing their own flowers.
INSIGHTS
1. "The most remarkable part of the flower shower was the way that Jo was able to take a relatively unskilled workforce and make sure everyone was included and able to help. It was also so neat the way she was able to maintain creative control of the vision with so many people there helping, some of which had definitely never done it before." - my friend's mom lol
2. Many couples are willing to ask for help from friends and family to save money (typically at least $2k) on flowers BUT struggle to ask for help closer to the event.
3. There are many aspects of DIY floral planning that are the same for all events (ex. how to keep flowers fresh) while other areas depend on the plan and style of flowers.
4. Many couples don't have a strong vision for flowers and need help picking a style to hone in on.
5. Most couples start with planning flowers and find out they're over budget too late - they'd prefer to work backwards from a budget to begin.
OUTCOME
I realized the main value prop for this business would be: anyone can do their own flowers with the right materials and instructions. I learned I could best help with deciding whether to DIYs, picking a style, and then provide resources to make putting everything together easy. On top of that, I personally can provide custom plans to add an additional layer of organization and expertise while still enabling couples to execute on their own.
Brand Vision
CHALLENGE
So far I've connected with couples who are already friends - they know and trust me with this aspect of their wedding, and we can easily sync throughout the process. In order to scale my ability to help others, I needed to create an online presence that would: help couples find my services, learn about the company and earn trust in it as an option, provide a space to share content like guides, videos, and contact forms.
ACTIVITY
I started with defining initial branding with a working set of visual design decisions that I could refine over time. My goal was to provide a look and feel that is approachable, fun, interesting, and modern.
Testing and playing with fonts:
Pulling colors from my favorite arrangments:
And then brought it together to start visualizing the brand:
Then, I started organizing what content and options the website would need to include:
OUTCOME
I made a quick set of mockups using these choices to get a feel for how they'd translate to a website design. This was a great exercise for making sure that the branding guidelines result in usable decisions that align with what I'm envisioning. Overall I felt like many of the colors felt desaturated and the needed more dimension/elevation to clean up the design.
Site Design
CHALLENGE
My initial layout and mockups left much to be desired. After a quick break away from the project, I came back with fresh eyes and was able to articulate what needed improvement:
- Colors should feel fresher
- Elements need more dimension and life
- Brands personality should show more, especially on landing
- If content is what users are here for, why make them navigate around to get started?
ACTIVITY
I returned to the color palette to create a cleaner set of primary colors, include an earthy greyscale, and organize accents into shades.
What's next?
Generating initial set of free guides
Publishing website
Social content plan for Instagram and Pinterest
Interest form for custom guides
Supporting three (and counting) weddings in 2025!