Always x Hatsune Miku X Tampax
Before we began our Senior Capstone project, my class was tasked with creating our ideal brand collaboration and what that campaign would look like design wise. As someone who believes we need more open conversations about mensturation and reproductive issues, especially among teenagers, I decided on a collab between Always and Tampax with fictional idol Hatsune Miku.
Miku is what is called a vocaloid, a piece of vocal music technology that was humanized by her company and has been a popular figure among younger generations. She is especially prevalent in meme culture as a favorable figure, and I feel it would be impactful to see this character incorportaed into a period product collaboration. The goal would be to destigmative mensturation in conservations and make younger audiences think more about periods and product access.
Once I had my illustrations of Miku, I went to work on the packaging for the collab. I found it important to keep the original designs for Always and Tampax mainly intact as I would want the brands to stay recognizable on the shelf of a convenience store. This meant simply changing the color palette to the teal, red, and dark gray colors I used in Miku’s design. I had to ensure that when I placed Miku on the front that she was prominent, but not obscuring the Tampax and Always logos.
My illustration work was the basis for the entire project. Since Hatsune Miku is a fictional 3D character often drawn in 2D art, it made it easy to create illustrations that feel like they could be apart of real collaboration. It gave me an opportunity to practice my digital work, and I made a great attempt at mimicing the bright and cartoon style of popular Hatsune Miku artwork. I designed her an unique outfit with obvious ties to menstural products; I found it very fun to replace her iconic teal pigtails with tampons.
Aside from the packaging redesigns and promotional products, a big part of the project was ideating what a large scale promotional event would look like for this collaboration. This is where Hatsune Miku’s reputation as a singer and performer made my decision easy: a large scale concert featuring the vocaloid that would take ticket sales and put those proceeds towards funding free sanitary product machines among middle and high school campuses, giving teenagers easy access to menstural products of their choosing.
