Brand Brochure — Wellness DTC
An eight-page brochure for a sleep-focused DTC brand — editorial typography, kinetic title plates, and the kind of pacing usually reserved for a quarterly. Briefed Monday, delivered Friday.
Six slides from the finished deck.
This is the same render path the deck engine uses — not a screenshot. Hover to pause, arrow keys to navigate.
Hover to pause. Use arrow keys, dots, or the chevrons. This is not a screenshot — it’s the same render path used by the deck engine.
Brief
A sleep-focused DTC brand had a $9M direct business and three product SKUs. They wanted to walk into John Lewis, Selfridges and Liberty with something that wasn’t a media kit and wasn’t a deck. A brochure that buyers would pick up, read, and keep.
The founder had three retail meetings booked the following week. We had four days.
Constraints
- Reads on a coffee table. Buyers see thirty pitches a week. The brochure had to survive being skimmed and reward being read.
- Photography we already owned. The brand had a strong existing photo library. The work was art-direction and pacing, not commissioning new shoots.
- Print-ready. They wanted the option to send a CMYK-ready PDF to a printer for the stocking conversation, not just a digital read.
Process
The AI co-pilot drafted an eight-page structure in seven minutes from the brand’s positioning doc, three previous email campaigns and the existing photo library. The first draft handled cover, contents and product spreads cleanly but defaulted to a marketing-magazine cadence — every spread the same shape. Brand Compliance flagged the type pairing as too contemporary for the brand’s “quiet, considered” voice. Narrative Reviewer pushed back on the rhythm: every spread climbed to the same intensity, so nothing felt like a rest.
A senior designer rebuilt the type pairing around a softer serif and reset the rhythm — giving the brochure two deliberately quiet spreads between the louder product moments. Studio lead signed off on Friday morning.
Total AI time: roughly thirty minutes. Total human time: approximately seven hours across one designer and a copy editor.
What we changed and why
The first AI draft sat at the same volume for all eight pages — strong photography, confident headlines, every spread a peak. It read as exhausting after page four. The human pass added two “rest” spreads — one with a single line of poetry over a near-empty colour field, one with a small caption-only inset on a generous margin. The reader exhales. When the product story returns on page seven, it lands harder because the reader hasn’t been shouted at for six pages.
Type pairing changed from Söhne / Söhne Mono to Söhne / GT Sectra. The serif gave the long-form text the considered, broadsheet feel the brand actually has, and stopped the brochure looking like every other DTC’s 2024 launch.
“It reads like a magazine I’d pick up on a coffee table. People keep it on their desk after the meeting and that’s the point.”
Working on something similar?
Brief us in five minutes. Senior review back within four hours.
Start a brief