Exploring Cara: the next social media platform for artists and the creative industry
Scope
UI/UX Design, Product Design, Mobile & Web Design, Design Systems, Wireframing, Information Architecture, Marketing Design, Graphic Design, Copywriting
Tools
Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, DaVinci Resolve
Outcomes
A focused strategy to gain clarity on branding and positioning to help prepare for future growth and scalability.
A still frame from the Cara spec ad.
A social media platform that places itself at the forefront of supporting artists in the era of AI.
What is Cara?
A new social media platform designed for artists and the art community. Cara is a platform that focuses on sustaining human creativity by providing a space where the art is only made by people. In the current state of generative AI, Cara does not agree with the use of AI due to ethical and data privacy issues around it. While they do acknowledge the future role of AI in the creative industry, they remain committed to not hosting AI-generated portfolios until generative AI technology is regulated.
Founder of Cara, Jingna Zhang, decided to build a platform that artists and creatives can enjoy since other platforms are not currently interested in supporting them. Currently in open beta, Cara invites artists and industry professionals to join and contribute to its growing community.
A still frame from the Cara spec ad.
Here we can see how Cara is positioned relative to other brands and organizations from the perspective of professional, casual, and AI sentiment.
Research and discovery
My usual first step when approaching brand projects is looking for as much information as I possibly can on Cara and anything related to their brand. This included looking into user sentiments, other similar causes or organizations, and other brands or companies within the same space.
To gain some understanding of the landscape that occupies the art space as well as social media, portfolio platforms, and career development, I made a brand matrix to see where Cara is positioned relative to other companies or brands. Note that these placings are entirely subjective based on the perception of these companies behaviours and sentiments on AI. Many of these companies keep AI generated image content on their platforms which makes them lean more toward support of AI. Patreon is the only company I've noted that are mindful of AI generated content on their platform and is continuing to observe how they will develop their policies.
... if major companies won't take a stand to protect us, then we should build a home for ourselves.
Jingna Zhang — Founder of Cara
A workshop where I started with putting down as many notes that answers the question of what artists experience today; what are their needs, wants, and frustrations?
User personas and brand attributes
From the insights I found from online user sentiments within the art community, I created a few personas from a quick discovery workshop. The goal was to see as many user goals, needs, and pain points onto a board and then sort them into categories or themes. From there I extract personas that represent those common themes. I came up with four user personas that encompass Cara's core users.
With these user personas in mind, I used my brand attribute framework to see what the Cara brand would be like and start with a rough draft of the brand's positioning. Upon further refinement, I find what I believe would be Cara's mission, vision, positioning, core values, and voice. This is the discovery work that lays the foundation of branding and informs any further development of design and marketing.
Four user personas that represent Cara's core users.
Brand attribute framework.
Stylescapes
What's great about doing the discovery work is that it lays the foundation and informs the creative process. Before I even sketch the logos, I made a few quick stylescapes to test out overall aesthetics, typography, colour, and imagery. This is a great surface-level way of portraying what Cara's brand could look and feel like. This exercise was about finding the foundation of Cara's brand as well as exploring the most extreme version of it.
I love the anti-design trend and I think it's a very fitting direction for the brand. What's great about what I envision for Cara is that while the look and feel has a foundation, the branding should be flexible and openly explore other styles and aesthetics. Ultimately, the most important concept was to celebrate the artist and really give a spotlight to artwork.
Stylescapes to imagine a look and feel from the beginning stages of designing. Exploring the anti-design aesthetic in its most extreme to taking a more subtle approach to it.
A huge inspiration was the Ontario College of Art & Design branding. I wanted that sense of adaptability that their logo has. All sketches were drawn in Procreate.
Logo exploration
With the foundational work and visual directions in mind, I begin sketching out different ideas for Cara's logo. Going for multiple different directions before finding an idea that I would dial in on. I had certain ideas I was going for, which was "art process". Going from sketch, to lineart, to render. I also wanted a mark that was flexible, dynamic, and can be adaptable for different scenarios, forms, or mediums.
Eventually, I developed a wordmark that is familiar to their current logo. As I was exploring I found a way that I could incorporate the idea of "art process" by changing the underline that Cara's logo has. It seems to be a significant part of their logo and I thought there was room to play with and give that sense of adaptability.
Before.
After.
The Sketchmark
There are two versions of Cara's underlining sketchmark; one is low-res, meant to scale comfortably with the logo at any size and a high-res version that can be used for various marketing material. The low-res version gives more definition of the negative space between the sketchmarks to allow it to be readable at small scales. The high-res version would lose those details when shrunken but at larger sizes can it be seen clearly.
The sketchmarks at low-res (left) and high-res (right).
A fun series of posters to express Cara's support for artists and creative industry. Notice the subtle use of the sketchmark at the bottom of each poster. Art by Santa Norvaisaite, Toraji, and Alex Jaeger on Cara.
Brand styling and guidelines
In preparation for the possibility of this project being taken on by the Cara team, I prepared rough drafts and an outline of what would be the brand's guidelines. Prior to this process, I finalized on choosing the typefaces and colours for Cara.
Some example pages from the Cara Brand Guidelines document.
Cara Spec Ad: The Human Pursuit of Creativity
To see this brand project come together, I decided to film a spec ad that expresses what Cara is all about. The messaging for this ad needed to be treated delicately because I didn't want it to be too obvious, too vague, or... hostile. Eventually, I came up with messaging that I believe uplifts human creativity while subtly expressing Cara's stance on AI.
Product redesign
Before any designing, I took a sort of surface-level look at Cara's architecture to see where I could make optimizations. I have an account on Cara so I was able to see what it looks like when not logged in and logged in.
Optimizations I took note of were making navigation consistent, getting rid of some redundancy in navigation language, maximizing profile view, and taking note of where there might be room for play or innovation.
User home feed before.
A map of the Cara platform.
Wireframe iterations exploring different placements of critical elements of Cara's user home feed.
User home feed after.
Discovering new art and artists
One of Cara's important features is discovering art from other artists. The explore page serves as a way for users to find new art and also serves as their landing page when the user isn't logged into an account. When not logged in, the Explore page would have a hero section with a CTA for users to join the Cara community. When not logged in, the hero section is replaced with a carousel of blog posts.
Explore page before.
Explore page after.
Cara Explore page when user is logged in. A grid view with ten columns as opposed to eight is an option to show more artwork.
Portfolios for profiles
A main feature for users is the ability to highlight their best work for their portfolios so that it can be seen by peers and potential art directors or employers. For profiles, users are able to choose if they want either their timeline or portfolio as the default view for those who visit their profiles.
Maximizing space for portfolio view was a priority because why not show as much work as possible? During this part of the redesign I also streamlined some of the functionality.
New timeline profile view. Art by Ami Thompson.
Maximizing space for portfolio view by having more art visible from the top.
A feature I wanted to add for profiles is being able to make their about page essentially just like a CV to help with job searching. Putting work availability and their past projects up front would be a great way to show art directors a high-level view of their qualifications.
If they need to see more, they would be able to see past experience, tools, and education in the about section of their profile.
Profile about section before.
Profile about section after.
Profile about section edit state.
Thread view mockup of an artist's post. Art by Ami Thompson.
About Cara
Cara's about section was something I really wanted to work on since it's where I thought I could see how the look and feel would really come together. Alongside some copywriting to condense the content as much as possible, I really wanted to see if I could use the voice of the brand that I defined and make it shine through the copy.
About page before.
About page after. Art by Karin Brandenberg, Marc Simonetti, Tobias Kwan, Alex Forner, Anato Finnstark, Rembert Montald, Kan Liu, Loish, Aymeric Kevin, Ismail Inceoglu.
Cara's blog
Redesigning Cara's blog was last on my list but something I wanted to do just because I enjoy doing editorial design. Going for a clean look for easy readability and a way to really highlight the artwork posted in many of Cara's blog posts.
Cara blog redesigned.
Cara blog post redesigned.
What are the next steps?
While this project was mainly focused on Cara as a brand and the desktop version of their product, the next steps would be to move on to their app. I did some work on it but decided not to continue as this project will be pitched to the team at Cara.
Cara app redesign concepts.