Ashley Seo

Crunchyroll wanted to refresh their brand, in potential of future rebranding overall. I worked on the refresh that consisted of adding new colors, slimmer icons, new graphic elements, new fonts, graphic style treatment. The concept to this project was to create a style that was fun, upbeat, yet simple enough to not compete with the anime artwork from the licensors. A mature look that kept playful demeanor.

The brand would re-skin most digital and print placements, such as: google ads, social posts, postcards, and conventions. 

Members Involved
Audrey Jardin. Senior Art Director
Aliana Rood. Ecom Art Director

I had the honors to do Crunchyroll's Anime Awards campaign the second year. The Awards consisted of 17 different categories in which fans select their favorite nominees for 2017. The website was designed and developed in seven different languages, giving world-wide fans a chance to vote for their year favorites. After voting for each category, the winners would be announced at the Anime Awards Ceremony, held in Hollywood. 

Compared to 2016's branding, this year was a total 360. We wanted something to feel more "premium" and less illustrated compared to the previous year. The tone set for 2017 was more mature and pristine. 

Given the opportunity to brand 2017's overall design, it entailed brand development, website design, marketing campaigns, social media posts, and so on.

The ceremony was live streamed on Twitch, streaming nation and worldwide. 

Had the wonderful pleasure of also making the award trophies, one in which is living with Christopher Sabat, English voice character of Vegeta. Taking home the Industry Icon award. 

For Twitch live stream event

Press coverage:
LA Weekly
Forbes Magazine
 

Members Involved
Ryan Ford. Product Manager
Kyle Crumrine. Principle Product Designer
Anibal Nunez. Video editor and producer
Bill Bergen. Video motion graphics

 

Using the 2017 branded look, added new artwork specialized for the expo of Hime and friends.  The overall design branded the expo though website, print and digital marketing. 

Outdoor Marketing
Produced outdoor media marketing for Crunchyroll's first expo using large scale bus and local train graphics. Was able to develop in a 2-3 day turn around that magically did not murder my computer.

CRX Merch Booth
Developed the booth for exclusive merchandise that was being sold at the convention. The booth show cased various merch to draw fans from afar. This project was given to me very last minute and needed to be printed that nigh. I was able to develop quick enough for print.  

Members Involved
Audrey Jardin. Senior Art Director
Aliana Rood. Ecom Art Director

Himojis were created to hype Crunchyroll users for Crunchyroll's first expo. The exclusive stickers would be released several days before the convention and be widely used by many Hime-chan fans. Illustrated various fun emotions of Hime and worked with a production team member to animate each Himoji.

Members involved:
Israel Sundseth. Senior Product Designer

Crunchyroll's marketing team developed a annual movie night that premieres Anime films every quarter of the year. The first premiere announced Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. 

I created the logo and branding for the website (desktop and mobile) for consumers to find more info on the event.

Members involved:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
Anibal Nunez. Video Editor

Crunchyroll had a small campaign to reach out to the general audience towards anime. The campaign consisted of a landing page briefly describing Crunchyroll and what it offered. The links embedded in the site would direct viewers to the Crunchyroll website for more information. 

View campaign website here

Members Involved: 
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director

Anime Awards is Crunchyroll's first award campaign for anime fans to vote best anime of the year and shows for 14 different categories. The campaign involved having a logo, personalized icons for each category, and special marketing material to draw fans to vote. T-shirts were later developed to give out during the Anime Awards ceremony to announce the winner of the awards.

As their first Anime Award, there were nearly 2 million engagements through the site and various other sites. Due to its success, Crunchyroll plans on having future award campaigns. 

Visit site here

Members Involved
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director

Hime is Crunchyroll's mascot, who represents everything anime! Hime's use was for brand positioning. Her characteristics are she is upbeat, casual, direct, and mischievous. She takes two forms which is her normal height at 5’10 and her “chibi” form at 2’11.

I was asked to develop a new Chibi Hime concept using my illustration skills. After her development, we were able to use her for a Halloween Campaign surrounding the idea of a Halloween Costume Contest for Hime. Fans submitted designs of her costume, we picked a winner and drew the fan’s artwork onto Hime as her new costume of the year. 

Big thanks to George Sarvis in developing the Yokai characters/ Hime's friends! 

Members Involved
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
George Sarvis. Graphic Designer 

We had the opportunity to partner with Japanese licensors to develop merchandise to sell onto our Crunchyroll Collection shop. Bananya was one of the summer season favorites. Bananyas are very cute kittens and cats that live in bananas and derived from outer space (my kind of jam). Developed a pattern that can be placed on most apparel and came in different color options. 

The Crunchyroll Collection was the first wave of lifestyle apparel products offered by Crunchyroll. This is one of my favorite projects and had a lot of fun creating and collaborating with others in developing patterns and illustrations that our fans would wear with pride. 

Members included:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
Aliana Rood. Designer
Michael Melby. Merchandise Rights Manager & Coordinator

Products developed by Skyou

Anime Snob was a new/different phrase I developed as a concept for the CR Collection. Type was hand drawn and traced over on a tablet. Explored variations of using the design gearing towards either different age groups/fashion trends: The basic, the retro and the young/wild. 

The actual term is "Anime Trash", but got some anime fan thumbs up with the new catchy phrase. 

Members included:
Michael Melby. Merchandise Rights Manager & Coordinator

Products developed by Skyou

Hime-Chan CR Collection is part of the exclusive wear (CRx) for fans to wear in pride of Crunchyroll. Developed a custom pattern of Hime and her favorite things that were fit onto various types of merchandise. 

The Crunchyroll Collection was the first wave of lifestyle apparel products offered by Crunchyroll. This is one of my favorite projects and had a lot of fun creating and collaborating with others in developing patterns and illustrations that our fans would wear with pride. 

Shop is available here

Members involved:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
John Ducusin. Senior Graphic & Motion Graphics Designer
Aliana Rood. Designer

Products developed in Skyou

Anime Expo is the largest anime and manga convention in North America held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The event consists of many fans of anime and manga who are able to share their interest within the Japanese content world. 

Booth
I was given the honor to develop Crunchyroll's 2016 booth graphics. The booth was a 40'x40' area that had two rooms (storage and store)- space in the front for other marketing material, line space for fans to purchase at the built in store and a line to sign up for a premium membership. The center back panel was used for interviews and social space.

Live Stage
2016's convention was the second year Crunchyroll has made presence and wanted to make a larger presence than last year. We were given stage space for live panels and interviews of directors and executives of favorite anime titles. The backdrop was nearly 20ft high and wide with Crunchyroll branding. This is probably the largest file I have ever worked with but thankfully printed and executed well with the help of Crunchyroll's convention team.

Members included:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
Adam Sheehan and Lauren Stevens. Convention Leads

With so many conventions and Crunchyroll growing every year, what better way to market titles and brand by creating walking billboards? Developed a convention bag that served as something useful for fans to carry for goods and something to wear with pride with Crunchyroll's branding. With permission to use graphics of popular anime titles, we were able to advertise the show and company overall.

The physical design of the bag was popular that year. Many competitors tried duplicating the same purpose but did not execute the development and material of the bags. Working closely with the convention team, I was able to develop a solid template for vendors to replicate and decide back and forth for quality material. Due to poor material and quality control, competitors bags were ripping after mere use. Soon enough, fans were running over to Crunchyroll booths for the bags. The convention bags were sold out at every convention in 2016. 

Members involved:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
George Sarvis. Graphic Designer
Adam Sheehan and Lauren Stevens. Convention Leads
Tiffany Chen. Brand Manager

Illustrated Crunchyroll's 2015 holiday campaign to upsell their Premium membership. Illustrations and typography were marketed through social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The upsell artwork was also utilized in emails, website carousel and forums. 

Crunchyroll is a leading global destination and platform for Japanese anime and Asian content. Crunchyroll delivers more than 25,000 episodes and 15,000 hours of officially-licensed content from leading Asian media producers directly to viewers translated professionally in multiple languages

Emails
Developed multiple types of emails that ranged from showcasing anime titles that were simulcasting during the season or special emails highlighting a anime title. 

Members involved:
Mason Koo. Senior Art Director
 

Concepts for Go Raw's protein bar line "Grow Bar". Developed two different iterations of protein bar packaging. 

First concept is rolling off of their current logo. They wanted to created their bars as a sub-brand to their current one. 

Second is going towards more of a fitness direction. With bolder texts and a flexing logo, the design directs demographics for men and women. 

Hampton Creek is a innovative food company that creates plant based products. By extracting proteins from various plants, Hampton Creek is able to use the protein in various ways to make food healthier and affordable for families everywhere. 

A Cookie Can Change The World
After partnering with Compass Group, the largest food service in the U.S., I developed a kit that consisted all marketing assets to promote the new partnership and items in all Compass accounts. The Just Cookies Launch Kit continues to be distributed in multiple cafeterias nationwide.

Members involved
Jordan Viola. Creative Director

As the leading foodservice and support services company, Compass Group North America is building a family of experiences for their customers. Their service award-winning restaurants, corporate cafes, hospitals, schools, arenas, museums, and more.

Farmers Know
Compass Group wanted Hampton Creek's creative team to help brand a year long campaign- to help reduce the amount of food waste due to the deformation/not perfectly developed of fruits and vegetables, known as "Farmers Know".

The concept of “Farmers Know” was to show consumers that deformed fruits/vegetables are just as nutritious and tasteful as any other perfectly formed fruits/vegetables. By showing farmer’s preferring deformed fruits more, it would seem more convincing to embrace than to put back on the shelf. Because farmers would know best. Right?

Members involved
Jordan Viola. Creative Director

Hampton Creek is a innovative food company that creates plant based products. By extracting proteins from various plants, Hampton Creek is able to use the protein in various ways to make food healthier and affordable for families everywhere. 

Hampton Creek's recipes using Just Mayo as the base. There was a high demand of recipe requests from consumers. This was one of my earliest projects with Hampton Creek. 

Members Involved:
Jordan Viola. Creative Director

Hampton Creek is a innovative food company that creates plant based products. By extracting proteins from various plants, Hampton Creek is able to use the protein in various ways to make food healthier and affordable for families everywhere. 

One of my first projects with Hampton Creek was to re-design their flavored mayo logos. The company was going to be introducing their new flavors in a month, and their logos at the time, did not match their branding or was not tasteful. 

From taking their old designs, I simplified and cleaned up the logos to look more minimal. These logos are continued to be used today.

Members involved
Jordan Viola. Creative Director

A series of posts illustrated for Hampton Creek's social media during Halloween season- promoting their products: Just Mayo, Just Mayo Flavors, and Just Cookie Dough. Halloween is one of my favorite holiday so I had a blast illustrating these!

Project 7 is a specialty gum and mint brand dedicated to bringing great flavor back into your day while at the same time giving back to 7 areas of need. The company partners with non profits making impacts both here in America and abroad. 

My duties being part of their creative team was to develop concepts of packaging of their product.

The Gum
Save the Earth and Feed the Hungry 15 count gum tubes was my first major project at Project 7. Working closely with their product development team, I developed and engineered the gum tube packaging and design. A month later, the product was distributed in Target stores nationwide. 

Feeding the Hungry
Feed the Hungry is one out of the seven campaigns Project 7 helps support and gives charity to (Feeding America Non Profit). For every merchandise sold, particular amounts of meals would be given to the poor and the community needed. For this special campaign, the creative team and I developed a sub-brand to bring new tastes in Project 7’s brand and to also have the opportunity to develop merchandise.

Members involved:
Scott Patt, Creative Director
Darren Dunham, Creative Director
Kelly Hickenbottom, Graphic Designer
Amanda Hetrick, Graphic Designer
Cathy Calixo, Product Developer

Synergy Direct Response produces effective, engaging, and high quality direct response materials that generate consistent positive responses for their clients. By developing printed and online marketing materials, Synergy Direct Response builds a campaign that effects local business to achieve a company's business growth.

Spring Influencer Gift Bundles
One of my favorite projects working with Synergy Direct Response was their quarterly gift baskets for their clients. For their spring 2013, I hand developed and designed their  gift baskets that consisted the tools needed for planting. Each basket had a custom printed lid, a Synergy branded planting pot, soil, a water spray canteen, and planting tool. Many clients were very pleased by the gift and was given a lot of positive feed back.

Drybar's philosophy is to be pampered, without cuts or coloring- just blowouts, without the painful costs at a salon. 

As their temp designer, I assisted with developing e-commerce concept designs and printed marketing materials that are distributed nationwide.