Brand Libs
Open the game- Brand
- Frontify
- Year
- 2026
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Tech & Telecom
- Mechanic
- Puzzle
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Cottondesign
Objective
Frontify sells a centralized brand management platform, and needed a way to make an abstract case for it — that guidelines, not just assets, are what makes a brand — land with designers and brand managers who tune out slide decks. Working with Cotton Design, it built that pitch around a cooking analogy: brand assets are ingredients, guidelines are the recipe, and only together do they add up to a brand. The game sits at the top of the funnel, entertaining its target audience before sending them on to Frontify's product page.
Solution
Players land on brandlibs.frontify.com and move from an intro screen into four numbered rounds, each built around a Mad Libs–style sentence full of blanks. Images rain down from the top of the screen — logos, colors, patterns, and other brand assets — and the player drags them into the empty slots to see what kind of brand comes out the other end. A custom cursor and a distinct "wrong pick" state, complete with hidden jokes, make mismatched combinations worth trying just for the payoff, not just something to avoid. After the fourth round, a final screen invites players to "try it for real" and hands off to Frontify's product page.
- 1
The game opens on an intro screen with the Frontify logo, the title "Brand Libs," and a tagline noting that pizza, jackets, and brands are all better when the right elements come together; a single "Start playing" button is the only way in, with no separate instructions.
- 2
Each round opens on a Mad-Libs-style sentence with two blanks (e.g. "A ___ is made with ___") on an otherwise empty field. A thin progress bar tracks the round in one corner while a persistent "Try it for real" link to Frontify's product page sits in the other throughout play, and the mouse cursor is replaced by a photographic hand that pinches its fingers on hover to signal that objects are grabbed, not clicked.
- 3
A row of cut-out photo assets floats in from the bottom for whichever blank is active, marked by a dashed outline, and the player drags one into place; the two blanks draw from alternating pools, one of finished items (pizza, burger, cake) and one of raw materials or guideline pieces (flour, sugar, fabric scraps). A mismatched drop triggers a distinct error state, with some wrong pairings hiding sight-gag jokes, and the whole set flies off-screen to be replaced by the next batch.
- 4
When a fitting pair lands in both blanks, the sentence completes and reveals the brand that combination of ingredient and guideline produces.
- 5
The player works through four numbered rounds this way, each with its own sentence and its own set of assets.
- 6
Finishing the fourth round opens an outro screen whose "Try it for real" call links out to Frontify's actual product page.
