Black Friday is a big deal for all of retail, and it’s a really big deal for discount-slingers Groupon Coupons. As opposed to selling particular products, the goal was to direct consumers to the top savings of the season, complete with tailored gift guides and exclusive discount codes for the season’s biggest ticket items.

I developed this campaign’s look and feel from the ground-up. During my research phase, I found myself bored of the obvious color scheme of most Black Friday marketing: harsh stark black. Deep purple contrasted by neon green type is far more novel, still recognizable in the broad Black Friday landscape, and informed the next major element of the campaign: the neon tubing. I was inspired by a custom neon signage shop I would pass every day on my commute to and from work, and I really appreciated the specific aesthetic of hand-bent neon tubing. I wanted to channel the human element of a trained artist that has physical restrictions on the structure they’re creating. After deciding on a general typeface for the campaign, I hand-traced the text’s outline with vector lines to make it my own, taking special care to consider where tubing would economically begin and end if I were actually going to create these signs in real life. I then applied this same technique to the illustrations for the campaign’s articles and gift guides, resulting in a deceptively complex illustrative style. Each neon item in the campaign can be traced as a single line, with only certain parts illuminated. Working with iconic logos was among the most challenging and rewarding elements of this campaign, taking typography into careful consideration while considering how to, essentially, turn very recognizable logos into one-line neon signs.

This look proved versatile. We expanded it to the next phase of the sales holiday, the green and yellow-themed Cyber Week. Eventually we decided to also incorporate it in the final event of the year, our Holiday Gift Guide, where the starry background was swapped for a bright snowy scene. Black Friday continues to be Groupon Coupons’ biggest event of the year.