From Procrastination to Productivity

Crafting brand identity for a YouTube channel

Hey there! I’ve been exploring UX design for a little over a year now, and recently, I decided to try something new. I joined the second brand design cohort by 10kdesigners, and it was an absolutely amazing experience! The assignments were so well thought-out and engaging that I found myself enjoying every bit of the work, even though I typically dread doing assignments. Here, I’ll be sharing the process I followed to complete one such assignment.

A little context

We got an assignment to design the brand identity for a YouTube channel. I was assigned the topic of a productivity channel.

• Timeline — We got 10 days to submit our work. Owing to my other commitments, I gave it almost 3 days.
• Deliverables — We had to come up with a channel name, brand identity & brand elements.
• We could either design for any existing channels or come up with a new one.

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s dive right into it!

Discover

As the first step, I decided to explore. I searched and observed different already existing productivity channels on YouTube.

Examples of productivity channels on YouTube

🔍 Findings

• Productivity channels and videos are not uncommon (obviously).
• After watching a video, the motivation to be productive lasts for some time & then fades away.
• Different channels have different target audiences. But most of them do not serve any specific audience.

💡 So what does this mean?

• My channel should be designed to stand out in the crowd.
• The ideas delivered should stick with people for longer duration.
• I should cater to a selected audience rather than serving to everyone.

Define

Now that I had a basic idea of what others were doing, I decided I’d design brand identity for a completely new channel with a new concept.

Target audience

I wanted to focus on gen-z and young adults. Why? Simply because this is a personal project & I can easily empathize with this audience 😬

General Idea

Remember how we used to throw our phones away and start studying as soon as we heard our mom’s footsteps? At least I did that 😛

Moms are generally good at pointing us out when they see us wasting time. Somehow, this keeps us away from distractions whether we like it or not. So, what if we converted this idea into a YouTube channel?

Living alone is fun (is it?)

Apart from the YouTube channel, I also had to think about the platforms I’d use to promote my content. I decided to use Instagram & Twitter to give a slight nudge to my target audience when they find themselves spending a lot of time there.

Develop

Now, I had to experiment with the visual identity. I wanted the tone of the channel to be stern but supportive, just like moms. I needed to find a witty way to deliver content so it would actually interest my target audience. And that’s exactly what I tried to do :)

Introducing MomZoned 🥁

YouTube Channel

MomZoned’s Instagram post

MomZoned’s tweet

📝 Learnings

• While there were no real users to be served for this project, but I’m sure conducting a little deeper research wouldn’t have hurt.
• Many other YouTube channels follow this style for their videos. Maybe I should have gone down the untrodden path?
• I did not iterate or look for alternative ideas, just went ahead with the first one. Maybe I could have developed something more innovative had I given it more time.

External Validation

Here’s the feedback I got from my fellow cohort members & mentors

Super grateful to my BX fam ❤

Conclusion

It was a fun project to work on. Also, getting to see other cohort members work and thought process was super inspiring.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check out my portfolio here. PS — I’m looking for new opportunities ✨