Focus 05
A SoHo State of Mind — Subway Ad Campaign
Overview
Focus 05 is a fictional SoHo restaurant built as the brand at the center of this project: a full subway ad campaign designed to answer one question — how do you get a fast-scrolling, aesthetic-driven Millennial audience to actually stop, look, and want to be there?
The project ran through a full human-centered design process — researching who the audience really is, translating that research into a typeface, color, and imagery system, developing three distinct ad directions from that same toolkit, then testing and refining the strongest ideas based on real legibility and impact problems.
The Challenge
The existing subway ad for Focus 05 was visually outdated: a solid black background, heavy white text, and food photography isolated with no sense of place or people. It read as generic and impersonal — a style that leans toward older generations rather than the Millennial diners the restaurant actually needed to reach.
The brief: redesign the ad from the ground up so it speaks directly to Millennials in SoHo — replacing the flat black background with lifestyle imagery, introducing a real color and type system, and building an emotional, shareable first impression instead of a purely informational one.
Research: Who Am I Designing For?
The target audience is Millennials — roughly ages 22–42, the first generation of true digital natives. Research into this group shaped every decision that followed: they respond to authenticity, inclusivity, and experience-driven branding over traditional hard-sell advertising, and lean on peer experience and social proof rather than being told what to like.
Traits that shaped the design
- Digital natives — fast-scrolling, quick to judge, used to high visual polish
- Social and group-oriented — dining and drinking is a shared, communal experience
- Influencer- and aesthetic-driven — value strong visual storytelling over copy
- Experience seekers — chasing memorable, “instagrammable” moments
- Confident but time-pressured — optimistic, but overloaded and quick to move on
The takeaway: the ad needed to feel visually striking within seconds, use a background image rather than a flat color, and lead with atmosphere and connection rather than a hard sell.
Building the Brand Toolkit
Typography
Three modern sans-serifs were shortlisted for their flexibility — Zujin, Stark, and Resonate. Zujin (semi-bold) was ultimately chosen as the primary display face for its clean, slightly rounded geometry — modern and a little warm, rather than cold and corporate.
Color
Two potential palette directions were explored: a “Neo-Soho Luxe” palette (elegant, modern, textured) and an “Editorial Café” palette (soft, indie-magazine-meets-SoHo-cafe). The final palette pulled the strongest notes from both: Warm Sand, Olive Leaf, Terracotta Wine, Soot Black, Golden Amber, and Dusty Sage — a nature-based, tactile palette with enough polish to still read as “luxe.”
Imagery
The imagery direction blends two kinds of storytelling: the social moment (friends sharing food and drinks) and the environmental mood (interior lighting, textures, atmosphere) — speaking to both a bright, casual daytime energy and a moodier, low-lit evening one.
Three Directions, One Brand System
Using the same typeface, palette, and photography, three distinct ad concepts were developed to test how different Millennials respond to different kinds of visual hierarchy — bold typography, immersive photography, or a balance of both.
Concept 1 — Type-Led: “A SoHo State of Mind”
A restrained, editorial approach: warm sand background, headline in Golden Amber, logo in Soot Black, and a strip of storytelling imagery along the bottom edge. Color does the work of guiding the eye — first to the message, then to the brand.
Concept 2 — Image-Led: “Next Stop: Focus 05”
The opposite approach: imagery is the whole ad. A full overhead spread of the table — food, hands, glassware — carries the energy and atmosphere with almost no text. The location and URL sit quietly in the corner.
Concept 3 — Hybrid: “You’ve Arrived at Your Taste Destination”
A blend of the first two: the same central photography, repositioned into corner accents around a bolder structured headline — the immersive feel of Concept 2, with the clear hierarchy of Concept 1.
Testing & Iteration
Each concept was tested for real-world legibility — not just how it looked as a flat file, but how it would read on a lit subway platform, glanced at by someone walking past.
Iteration 1 — Baseline
The type-led concept held up well as-is; no changes needed.
Iteration 2 — Legibility Fix
The image-led concept had a real problem: the headline was getting lost in the busy food photography. The fix was a transparent gradient block behind the text — enough contrast to make the headline pop without covering the imagery.
Iteration 3 — Full Redesign
The hybrid concept was rebuilt entirely into a three-panel “gallery poster” layout. The same central table photo anchors the middle panel, flanked by two supporting food shots cropped into a curved clipping mask. A new tone, Dusty Sage, was pulled into the background, with the same legibility fix keeping “Focus 05” readable over the busy center image.
Design Rationale
The core problem with the original ad was that “Focus 05” didn’t register at a glance — it got lost against busy food photography, which doesn’t work for an audience used to fast scrolling. Shifting the wordmark to a high-contrast neutral tone and adding weight let it read instantly without fighting the imagery behind it.
Pulling Dusty Sage into the palette kept the system cohesive while giving the photography room to breathe. The three-panel structure gives the layout a clean, gallery-like rhythm while keeping the branding from ever getting buried — the imagery still carries most of the emotional weight, but the structure makes sure the message actually lands.
Reflection
Building three ads from one shared toolkit turned out to be the most useful part of the process — it made it possible to directly compare whether Millennials respond better to bold typography, immersive photography, or a balanced hybrid, instead of guessing. The legibility issues in testing were a good reminder that a concept that reads perfectly as a flat file can still fail in its real environment — a lit board, glanced at mid-stride.
If extended further, I’d want to mock the ads into an actual SoHo subway platform photograph and test a real physical location tie-in — something Concept 3’s “arrival” language was already reaching for.