After working freelance with Sonner Toys for a few years, I was employed full-time as the Creative Content Producer in early 2021.
As a small team, I also got heavily involved in other areas across the business as it expanded. As a result, I was promoted to the Brand & Technical Strategy Lead in mid-2022 until the end of 2022, when I departed the company.
Branding - Colour Palette
A major goal for many years was to introduce a colour palette to the brand after years of sticking to a black-and-white palette.
After researching, and extensive colour palette combinations, we ultimately settled on a light blue as our primary colour to reflect our Portsmouth and south coast heritage. It is also welcoming and sparks customers' imaginations.
The lime green was chosen to make us pop out from the sea of other colour palettes seen across the industry. It was limited to a supplementary role, like call-to-actions and highlights.
The dark colour was chosen as an alternative to using pure black to elevate content and ensure any text is legible with excellent assessable colour contrast against our light blue and lime green colours.
Branding - Icon Refinement
With the ever increasing use of the icon element from the main logo (internally called the "Black Hole"), it became clear that the spiral arms did not reproduce well at small scales and instead merged with main circle element.
As such, I refined the icon to increase the length of the arms and the negative space between the spiral arms and main circle element which corrected legibility at small scales.
Content Marketing
During my time working at the company, I produced many types of content for various multiple platforms. Here's a selection of my favourite work below👇
SONNERTOYS.COM 2.0
A year in the making - work included upgrading to the new Shopify Online Store 2.0 architecture to provide a solid foundation for future development, alongside launching new features and quality-of-life improvements for customers.
🎨 A new, yet familiar look • 🔎 Improved product search and discovery • 📧 Register interest in upcoming releases • 🛍️ Free click & collect • 🧾 Enhanced online account area • 🏆 Updated loyalty program • 🌘 Dark mode • and more
Portsmouth Store Revamp
I led the October 2022 renovation design of the Portsmouth shop located inside Cascades Shopping Centre.
I decided to strip it back to basics, leading to a more clean and spacious shop that is more accessible to customers and with a clear focus on the products themselves compared to the dark and cramped shop previously and many other similar shops.
More of my work
Here's more of my design work while working at Sonner Toys 👇
