Social media collection
Three brands, three feeds, one rule: every post has to look like the company that sent it.
Social Media
Collection
Role
Visual Designer
Timeline
Varied
team
Individual Contributor
platform
Instagram, Facebook
The Real Problem
Social creative fails in one of two ways. It looks like the brand and says nothing, or it says something and looks like everyone else. Three clients needed the version that does both.
night knight, a calm premium sleep brand, had to run a loud Black Friday sale without breaking the identity its website had just set. Zapli, a service that makes social posts for small businesses, needed a feed that was itself the proof the service works. Allego, a European EV charging network, needed sponsored posts, carousels and Reels that turned range anxiety into reassurance.
Each also had to work as a set: feed, story, carousel and Reel formats that read as one campaign and could be refilled by the client's own team.
Finding the Fix
One principle carried all three: fix one element, free the rest.
A constant brand layer. night knight kept its navy and violet gradients with the sale as a single bold line on top. Zapli kept one message card in indigo and violet over an ever changing grid of client work. Allego kept its lime green on the logo, CTA and highlight of every piece.
Design the smallest format first. The square feed post has the least room. Once the message, image and CTA sit comfortably there, stories, carousels and Reels are adaptations rather than new designs.
Separate earning attention from asking for money. The feed builds trust; stories and last call posts make the offer. Urgency comes from sequence, not volume.
Copy in the brand's voice. "Tomorrow starts tonight." "The platform for small businesses to get marketing done." "Charge your car. Do your thing." Each line could only belong to its brand.
What Actually Happened
night knight shipped three feed variants, a three phase story sequence (save the date, sale, last call), a carousel and a row of banners, all mocked up in the real feed for approval.
Zapli shipped a brand statement set in three treatments, a content mix of tips carousels, service updates, arguments and a meme style post, and a story set where the offer gets explicit: posts from $99, fast delivery, cancel anytime.
Allego shipped sponsored posts in static, carousel and moving versions plus Instagram and Facebook Reels, all lifestyle first with the proof line ("+950,000 chargers across Europe", "24/7 live human support") under the headline.
Each has its own case study on this site.
What Changed
Across the three brands:
Feed, story, carousel and Reel sets that read as one campaign each
A fixed brand element on every post, so the identity survives a sale, a meme or a client collage
Templates the client teams can refill by swapping the offer, the tip or the photo
Sales messaging placed where it converts, kept out of the posts that build trust
What I Had to Work With
Social formats are unforgiving, and each brand added its own limits.
Feed, story, carousel and Reel crops with different safe zones and text limits
A brand identity only weeks old (night knight) that could not be bent for a promotion
Client work in dozens of unrelated styles (Zapli) that had to sit together in one grid
Non negotiable brand rules around colour and wordmark (Allego)
Discount and pricing messages that can cheapen a premium product if handled loudly
Small client teams who would produce most future posts without a designer
What I'd Do Differently
Start with the motion version. Stories and Reels reward movement, and the gradients, grids and road footage in these three brands are made for it, so the statics should have been the adaptation, not the other way round.
Three things I would add to every set from now on:
User generated content and customer voice frames, since reviews are the strongest trust signal all three brands have
Before and after formats that prove the transformation instead of implying it
Localised variants where a campaign runs in more than one market
What I Learned
A promotion is a test of the brand system. If the sale post still looks like you, the identity is real.
When the service is content, the content is the case study. Design the proof into the background.
The smallest frame sets the rules. Get the square right and the rest follows.
