Club 75
Brand strategy & identity
MA final project
London College of Communication (UAL)
2024
How can a brand overcome resistant behaviours in older generations, and get them to adopt new tools and social habits?
Master's final project
Branding
Audience focus
Social isolation
Research
The research method had to survive contact with its own audience. An online survey in English got zero responses. Rebuilt in French, it got four. The breakthrough came from a phone call: a participant who had ignored every digital request opened up in conversation, describing a loneliness made worse by dating apps too complex to use. So the research moved to where the audience actually was, phone and in-person interviews, visual testing with focus groups, and analysis of existing senior platforms. Two findings shaped everything: the word “dating” made people recoil, while “meeting” made them curious; and the resistance wasn’t to technology itself, but to feeling that nothing was designed for them.
The answer
Club 75, a social club for people 65+, anchored in real-life events across Paris, with an app as the bridge, not the destination. The name comes from the Paris postal code, designed as a scalable system: Club 69 in Lyon, Club 13 in Marseille, each with a typographic identity drawn from French type designers to carry its regional character.
Identity
A palette tested directly with the audience, blues, purples and pinks that read as warm and optimistic rather than medical, with WCAG-compliant contrast throughout. Franklin Gothic for its quiet clarity. And one deliberately contrarian design decision: an app with minimal features, built to be used less, its job is to get people offline and into the same room. The promotional film cast real future members instead of actors; their grandchildren became the distribution strategy, sharing the club with the very people it was made for.
