{"id":159,"date":"2024-05-11T17:47:24","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T17:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/?p=159"},"modified":"2024-05-15T23:45:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T23:45:05","slug":"brand-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/unit-2b\/brand-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Domain Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In this section of our generative research I carried out domain research on the client Virgin Wines, investing 4 main topic areas of: About the brand and its community, Reviews, Events and Social Platforms and lastly, Borne Agency’s brand identity for Virgin Wines. For my research I used various resources including the Virgin Wines Shop, Hub, social media platforms, TrustPilot, The Guardian, Borne and many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the brand and its community:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Winemakers at Virgin Wines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Winemakers from Sussex, England<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From this generative domain research we discovered the different traits which Virgin Wines represents including its winemakers. Unfortunately to learn more about Virgin Wines winemakers the user was taken to another website called the Virgin Wines Hub. This website includes a wine guide, blog, news as well as a link back to their other website where users can shops their products. This is an aspect that lead to the design idea of including a section on the about us page dedicated to their winemakers. We found with competitors they talk about their wine, however Virgin Wines apart I believe including their winemakers will add character for the users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is because through the Virgin Wines hub you could read the unique and individual stories of the winemakers they are partnered with across the world. I found this fascinating in particular due to discovering that they have winemakers here in the Uk (seen in image on the right, above) which I found interesting as we don’t associate our wine with being made in the Uk. This is something that we believe is unheard of in the wine industry due to mass amounts linking to warmer countries like Spain, France and Italy.

I wanted to include a section dedicated to Virgin Wines’ Winemakers in the about us page as it allows the customer to dive further into the stories behind the wine, creating a deeper connection between the consumer and the product. This would also link to the hub where users can read the individual stories of each winemaker<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviews:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Trustpilot Reviews for Virgin Wines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Reviewcentre from customers at Virgin `wines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile in order to gather non-bias information I wanted to outline various reviews or articles across multiple companies to get a sense of the brand in the perspective of the consumer. This included articles from; The Guardian, Harpers, DrinksRetailer and Retail Week and reviews from Trustpilot, ReviewsCentre, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From these reviews, we found that there was an issue through the checkout process where customers have ended up paying for a subscription unknowingly once they have finished the purchased. This subscription was part of WineBank which is \u00a325 monthly payments however was dealt with quickly and smoothly with immediate change in action. This is an excellent review on the customer services and from here I believe including reviews on customer services are just as important as the products, delivery, etc as the staff will set the company apart from its competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to this, Truspilot hold over 22,000 reviews on Virgin Wines with overall rating of 4.5, 77% of which are 5 star ratings. This staggering number is what we believe should be displayed a sense of achievement as it would also give the user social proof on the brand due to the Trustpilot name being widely known, upholding a professional status to all its customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Events and Social Platforms:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Virgin Wines Blog showcasing social media posts about their customers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Subsequently, I swiftly moved onto domain research around the events and social platforms at Virgin Wines where I continued to analysis the customer feedback to get a bigger background on the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I got to see the customers perspective of the events through multiple posts on the both the Virgin Wines Hub and social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. I found that the quality of content on these platforms were significantly better then the ‘shopping’ website and so for initial sketches and ideas, I wanted to incorporate more images and clips of the events. Videos were made into a ‘TikTok’ and ‘reel’ form, reflecting current trends which shows the user a more fun and enjoyable side to a company. This relaxed tone is further echoed through their casual style of body text which I think appeals massively to their target audiences. It also diminishes stereotypes of the site being used by older audiences and events to be quiet and a sit down event. However in reality they have various age categories of users and events mirror a ‘Buzz atmosphere’. This is something which I could only see across their social media and so my goal for the events page is to reflect the ‘joy’ and ‘buzz’ created not only from their wine, but their events and the Virgin Wines team.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Borne Agency’s brand identity for Virgin Wines:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Virgin Wines came to Borne with a new brand positioning and purpose: \u2018To create joy from grape to glass\u2019. Borne wanted to make \u2018joy\u2019 the differentiating factor for Virgin Wines, something none of the competitors were doing, playing into the role of all Virgin brands of standing out by creating extraordinary experiences. Borne\u2019s response was a brand sentiment \u2013 a design idea that would govern the design decisions \u2013 built on this: \u2018A joy that flows, naturally.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Joy\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 What differentiates Virgin Wines as a brand.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Flows\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 Talks to the product and ease of buying wine.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Naturally\u2019 <\/em><\/strong>\u2013 Gives Virgin Wines a human feel and has nice product connotations with wine, such as grapes and vineyards. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This set them in a clear direction. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard to distil a brand to a single thought, an idea \u2013 but it\u2019s so important,\u201d says Darrel, Borne\u2019s creative lead on the project. \u201cIt joins every aspect, from a search button on a website that says \u2018get it now\u2019 rather than \u2018order\u2019, to a logo, an image, a font, a tone of voice.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Characteristics behind the font ‘Joy’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

These images emphasises how the typography changes were based on the fact that the wine subscription service market uses the same sans serif with serif font combination. Therefore, Borne moved Virgin Wines from \u2018looking like a wine company\u2019 to its own thing: ‘no sans serif, and a custom Dalton Maag font with \u2018flowing\u2019 lines, hidden smiles (spot it in the \u2018e\u2019) and \u2018drops\u2019 of liquid references within the type’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a group we loved the typography when enlarged as you got to see the details within the font and so we wished to introduce this into our designs. Like the brand guidelines, the idea was to present this design by just one word at a time or short puns\/ sentences. The use of these large words represent the company by summing up Virgin Wines into singular words, insinuating the true characteristics of the company highlighting ‘the passion poured into every bottle’ (Borne,2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘Joy’ animation from the brand guidelines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Story behind the font<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Use of hierarchy and large text<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we loved the motion which I discovered through Borne’s video on their Virgin Wines project and wanted to remake the design for our prototypes. This is where I began coming up with ideas in the background from all this inspiration and then myself and Hashry started to discuss if it would be possible to animate my ideas or if he was able to recreate the motion\/ animation we came across on Borne. This is also followed other discussions as a group where we wanted our designs to be interactive for the user so we are keeping them attention when scrolling through pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my domain research with Borne and the brand guidelines, I wanted to explore further how we could minimise the significant jump between font sizes as it appeared too drastic with the change in colours, weights, fonts and sizes all playing a factor in differentiating content. This is when I discovered the presentation slides used in the brand guidelines too, portraying how information would be laid out on a page due to it hierarchy with heading, subheading and body copy. The image above on the far right demonstrates this and so with a slightly smaller use of text, yet still enlarged was incorporated within our designs when we had more then one word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this section of our generative research I carried out domain research on the client Virgin Wines, investing 4 main topic areas of: About the brand and its community, Reviews, Events and Social Platforms and lastly, Borne Agency’s brand identity for Virgin Wines. For my research I used various resources including the Virgin Wines Shop, Hub, social media platforms, TrustPilot, The Guardian, Borne and many more. About the brand and its community: From this generative domain research we discovered the different traits which Virgin Wines represents including its winemakers. Unfortunately to learn more about Virgin Wines winemakers the user was taken to another website called the Virgin Wines Hub. This website includes a wine guide, blog, news as well as a link back to their other website where users can shops their products. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nua-ux.design\/maisy-trow\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}