What’s Up? Media wanted to extend its advertising relationships beyond its regional magazines by creating a digital daily-deal platform featuring offers from local businesses. The new product needed to feel connected to the company’s existing advertising ecosystem while establishing enough of its own identity to function as a recognizable consumer brand.
The challenge extended beyond designing a website. The platform needed a complete digital product branding system that could work across deal pages, promotional banners, email marketing, mobile screens, advertisements, and other campaign materials. Because daily-deal services were becoming increasingly common at the time, WonderDeal also needed a visual personality that could distinguish it from competing platforms.
The goal was to create a recognizable digital product and promotional system that made local deals easy to browse while giving What’s Up? Media a new way to connect its advertisers with consumers.
The brand needed to communicate value and savings without looking generic or overly transactional. The website, mobile experience, promotional materials, and advertising all needed to feel like parts of one coordinated platform while remaining flexible enough to feature businesses from different industries and locations.
WonderDeal was designed primarily for consumers already familiar with What’s Up? Media’s regional publications, along with a broader audience interested in dining, entertainment, shopping, health and beauty, and other local offers.
A second important audience was the company’s advertiser base. The platform needed to provide businesses with a credible promotional environment where limited-time offers could reach both magazine readers and digital audiences.
The visual system therefore had to work from two perspectives: it needed to feel approachable and engaging to consumers while presenting participating businesses within a professionally designed advertising product.
The project was developed as a connected digital product branding system rather than as an isolated website. Work included the main web platform, individual deal interfaces, mobile screen concepts, banner advertising, promotional graphics, email-oriented materials, and supporting visual assets.
The interface established clear areas for featured deals, pricing, savings, purchase actions, business information, and related offers. These functional components were paired with a stronger branded layer that could be carried into advertising and promotion.
An original superhero mascot was developed as part of that system. The character gave WonderDeal a recognizable spokesperson and created opportunities for storytelling, promotional illustrations, advertising scenarios, and campaign graphics that extended well beyond the core interface.
WonderDeal used a bright blue, green, white, and yellow palette designed to distinguish the platform from the editorial appearance of What’s Up? Media’s magazines while maintaining an energetic consumer-focused tone.
The custom superhero became the dominant brand asset. His costume incorporated the WonderDeal initials and brand colors, while exaggerated poses and illustrated scenarios reinforced the concept of helping consumers “save the day” through local deals.
The illustration system was paired with a structured digital interface using prominent offer imagery, price information, calls to action, and supporting advertiser content. Web screens, mobile concepts, display advertising, and character-based promotional graphics shared the same visual language, allowing the identity to move consistently across multiple formats.
WonderDeal resulted in a coordinated digital platform and promotional identity that extended What’s Up? Media’s advertiser relationships into a new consumer-facing product. The project brought together interface design, advertising, illustration, branding, and promotional communications rather than treating them as separate assignments.
As selected earlier work, the project is particularly useful in showing an early approach to digital product branding: establishing a recognizable identity and then carrying that system across the website, mobile experience, advertising, promotional graphics, and original character design.
Although the visual and technical conventions reflect the period in which the platform was created, the underlying approach remains relevant: build a distinct product identity, design around the needs of both users and advertisers, and create a flexible visual system capable of supporting multiple communication channels.
