Mysa

Mysa is a satiric wellness brand that was built and conceptualised as a part of Jana Počuchová's bachelor thesis in Interactive Media at NYU Abu Dhabi.

With this project, she aims to critique consumerist and capitalistic wellness culture by designing a satiric wellbeing kit. This kit ironically imitates similar existing products on the market: it contains objects with no proven medical utility (such as a candle, water bottle, essential oil, journal, etc.), all dressed in a trendy branding with an exorbitantly high price tag.

Accompanying the kit, she created an Instagram profile for the brand, as well as a fake e-shop website. The final stage of the project took place at the Capstone Show, where she built a marketing corner for the brand and displayed the products for “testing”. To communicate the satire, she utilized the rules of absurdity (found in the nonsensical product name and descriptions), proximity (making the products/brand appear legit only from a distance), and sensory experience (engaging sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch).

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Jana on Mysa’s Visual Language and Branding:

“I named the brand using a typical strategy of (not only wellness) brands: I stole a word from another language (Swedish) so that I can capitalize on a concept/practice I have no idea about, nor do I know how to properly pronounce it. 

And then I added the layer of capitalism, optimizing productivity, and individualism in a form of a mission statement that satirically guided my design process. 

In the initial stages, I made a set of rather arbitrary choices. The first traces of brand identity I created were not informed by research, and served as a starting point, as well as means to help me present the conceptual idea visually. 

The working logo was a combination of typography and a leaf icon. I worked with a playful pastel aesthetic of light pink and green, accented with dark brown. 

Only after proper market research into existing wellness and luxury brands and after conducting user interviews I completely shifted the visual direction. 

I started aiming for an elegant luxury feel and constructed a mood board.  I was inspired by an Instagram girl, luxury spa aesthetic in light gold/champagne tones contrasted by elegant black/dark brown and green tones that allude to nature. I also wanted to incorporate texture (satin or velvet) into the visual language of the brand.”

“I then continued to develop the style guide, narrowed down the primary and secondary color palette, and chose fonts for the brand. I aimed to communicate a sense of (slightly cheap) luxury, calmness, self-care, and nature. 

Alongside this process I also worked on the logo. I moved away from the initial logo with an icon as it did not resonate with the target audience, nor did it communicate my desired message of luxurious self-care. I ended up designing a typographic logo instead that alters the main font. Eventually, I used simple lines and dots to frame the logotype as well as to add a sense of balance to the brand messaging.  

When it came to designing the kit I opted for dark, amber glass containers to emphasize the handmade nature aesthetic. I initially envisioned the products to have a transparent label with white text only, however, that was not technically possible with the amount of text I wanted to fit in. In addition to that, I struggled with finding vendors here in the UAE who would be able to produce it in small quantities. 

After a couple of rounds of experimentation with the labels, I simplified it to the minimum: full black label stickers with light beige text. No product description, just the logo, product name, and volume/weight. This is a pattern I observed in multiple luxury cosmetics brands.”

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To read more about Jana's process, product development, user testing, and final exhibition, go to https://nine-steps-closer.squarespace.com/blog.