ToyTopia Exhibit

Phase 01: The Concept

For this project, I wanted to design a brand identity for a conference that actually felt fun and personality-driven instead of corporate. ToyTopia is a 3-day conference dedicated to the art and culture of collectible figurines, made for people who are already passionate about collecting, from casual hobbyists to seasoned collectors. The mission was to celebrate the fun, culture, and personal stories behind figurines, since they're really more like keepsakes tied to memories than just decorations. So the brand needed to feel just as playful and collectible as the community it was made for.

Phase 02: Logo Development

I started by sketching a ton of logo ideas in Procreate, pulling inspiration from real life figurines, packaging styles, and the playful character of the toys themselves. After narrowing it down to three contenders in Adobe Illustrator, I landed on a final logo that uses a little mascot character at the center, hand-drawn lettering, and a quirky composition that feels collectible in itself. The final mascot ended up becoming the heart of the entire brand and showed up everywhere from the app to the limited edition merch.

Phase 03: Brand System

For the visual identity I built out a full brand guide in Adobe InDesign including typography (Nexa across all weights), a color palette of magenta, teal, and a deep blue-purple, and a duotone halftone photography style I created in Photoshop that gave everything a punchy editorial feel. I also designed a custom set of illustrations and icons in Illustrator that could carry across print, digital, and physical touchpoints. The whole system was built to feel cohesive but flexible enough to apply to a promo poster, a conference app, a landing page, or even a 3D figurine.

Phase 04: Applications

To bring the brand to life, I designed a promo poster in Photoshop & Indesign, a web landing page, and a conference app prototype in Figma that included things like a schedule, featured speakers, a 3-day digital pass, and an about section. Each application carried the same duotone halftone style and mascot energy so the brand felt consistent no matter where someone encountered it. The app especially was where I got to push the brand into something interactive and see how the playful identity translated to a digital experience.

Phase 05: Unconventional Marketing

For the marketing campaign I went back to the core of what ToyTopia is, collectible figurines, and asked myself how I could turn the brand itself into one. Inspired by Duolingo's blind box campaign, I designed a limited edition ToyTopia mascot figurine using my own logo character, then modeled it in 3D using Womp. The result was a piece of guerilla marketing that feels more like a collector's item than an ad, which is exactly the kind of thing the ToyTopia audience would actually want.