Who. Retail buyers at Walmart, Target and Kohl's, and the shopper standing in front of the assortment. The work had to sell twice.
What. Licensed brand work is a different discipline from brand design. Sports Illustrated and Sonic already existed, they belonged to someone else, and the job was to make them survive contact with manufacturing, buyers and a dozen product categories without drifting. Nothing about it was mine to change. Everything about it was mine to protect.
How. I read licensor guidelines closely enough to know not just what they said but what they were protecting, then applied them across ten product programs — colour, typography and logo treatment holding correct from concept through dielines, mechanical files, proof reviews and factory submission. The hard part is never a single package. It is that a shopper sees the assortment together on one shelf: products designed in isolation look like a collection of items, products designed as a system look like a brand.
Outcome. Ten programs launched through Walmart, Target and Kohl's. Buyer-facing presentations that aligned sales teams and carried programs through retailer approval, plus trend and colour forecasting adopted across multiple SKUs.