What does a Gen-Z brand look like? Justified Studio creates identity for the “Depop of TikTok”

As Gen Z grows up – and becomes a key target market – designers are trying to figure out how to design for this audience. The most recent approach is from London-based agency Justified Studio, which has delivered an identity, name and digital experience for fashion marketplace Finds, “the first marketplace which puts video content at the centre of the commerce experience”. To design a brand that fills the gap between Depop and TikTok – two other popular Gen-Z platforms – Justified has integrated “online culture” and 90s design trends directly into the branding.

“The primary influence and inspiration is the Gen-Z audience we are targeting,” says Will Whiting, art director, and Joshua Ogden, creative director at Justified. Embedding the “digital vernacular of [its] Gen-Z audience” in brand copy and online culture through icon design, the studio wanted to capture “the spirit of a real-life marketplace,” but with a “digital twist that’s steeped in online culture”.

Colour pairings for Finds are a “slight pastiche” of the 90s, which the agency explains is one of the most popular categories on the app. For a marque, Joshua and Will wanted a design that would “communicate the spirit of a thriving online platform”. Opting for a symbol that felt “like it was a user”, Justified’s marque encapsulates the concept of motion, or dancing, while remaining “memorable when static”.

“The opportunity we saw was that buying clothes you love should be as interactive, as real-time as possible, with no differences between offline and online,” Joshua and Will summarise. “We aimed to own the white space between TikTok and Depop, to really utilise the video-first feature, which opens a huge gap for our brand experience to be as genuine, as engaging as possible.”

Other elements of the digital fashion landscape have also been incorporated. “A movement has started that is turning the second-hand market into an engaging and personal experience,” say Will and Josh. Centring an interactive experience, Justified Studio mirrors the user-led approach with the marketplace’s new maxim: “FIND it, love it, show it.”