Case Study

Target's More Than Magic

Inventing a lifestyle brand that spans categories.

Industry
Fashion, Accessories, Technology
Stage
Enterprise

Target wanted to do something they’d never done before. Their first ever cross-category brand: aimed at eight to twelve year-olds girls, and featuring over 500 products from appare...

Target wanted to do something they’d never done before. Their first ever cross-category brand: aimed at eight to twelve year-olds girls, and featuring over 500 products from apparel, beauty, tech, and stationery.

To resonate with this audience, they invited COLLINS to develop and launch an inclusive, imaginative brand that embraces girls’ uniqueness and self-expression.

Because it ain’t easy being a tween. You’re not a kid. Not yet a teenager. It’s often the resilience of your own imagination that gets you through it. We wanted to speak to this – creating a dreamlike, whimsical world that didn’t advocate perfection or some unrealistic ideal, but rather, magic and the surreal.

More Than Magic, as we named it, champions girls as they imagine who they are and who they could be. The playful brand illustration style brings more joy across every touchpoint with twinkling, magical creatures and skateboards sparkling off into the distance. Every element in our system is supported by an expansive color strategy that welcomes girls as they experiment with their own personal style and identity.

We’re thrilled to have partnered so closely with Target in helping to shape and bring this brand to life.

More Than Magic launched in Summer 2019. As a spirited beacon of self-expression, tweens shamelessly donned their sequined jackets, and post-tweenage-girls (a.k.a moms) said “it’s honestly kind of hard not to fall in love with it at first sight”.

That’s more than magic to us.

COLLINS
Gabe BenzurMegan BowkerMadeleine CarrucanBrian CollinsMichelle FonsecaCheryl JohnsonMari JulianoSanuk KimSohee KimTomas MarkeviciusDave RowlandBarney StepneyKris Wong
Target Creative

Augments

Augments are add-on components or properties that enhance a design system’s performance. They introduce new capabilities, expand functionality and improve how the system works across contexts.

Augments

Augments are add-on components or properties that enhance a design system’s performance. They introduce new capabilities, expand functionality and improve how the system works across contexts.

Validated Versatility

We pressure test our designs across every touchpoint, context and product category—from app tiles to billboards, screens to swag, school pencils to nail polish. This rigorous performance testing ensures that your brand remains consistent, recognizable and effective everywhere it lives for as long as it lives.

Flex Deck

A logic function embedded in the identity system to ensure brand coherence across diverse applications—critical for any high-performance system, as research shows coherent brands are 2.1 times more likely to achieve salience.

Shelf Pop

A performance property that ensures packaging visually pops on crowded shelves, driving purchase decisions in the critical 2.5-second scan window. High-contrast colors, bold typography and distinct shapes boost brand recognition by up to 80%.

Extensibility

A performance property that ensures identity systems can integrate future innovations and modules without losing coherence.

Custom Icon System

These icons channel pre-teen self-expression through playful forms, pastel colors and spark-like accents—creating a cohesive visual language that flexes across categories, products and moods.

Impact

6

Categories Unified

Our solution unified the product line across six diverse categories: apparel, tech, beauty, stationery, art supplies and accessories

500+ 

Product SKUs Unified

One visual language, infinite applications, bringing consistency to Target's most diverse private label line.

Greater Emotional Relevance

Built a brand that authentically resonated with tweens, speaking to identity, imagination and self-expression during a pivotal life stage.

1

Target's First Private Label for Tweens

Broke new ground for Target, as More Than Magic was its first-ever private label for tweens.

30B

Estimated Market Opportunity

More Than Magic opened Target's access to the multibillion‑dollar tween lifestyle ecosystem, an estimated ~$30B+ opportunity.