The brand's role was to find someone worth spotlighting and get out of the way.
VSCO's audience aren't passive consumers. They're makers. A platform that talks about itself to a community of creators isn't a brand, it's a landlord. So VSCO's social had to disappear into the community's work, not sit on top of it.
Working with a creative strategist, I built four content pillars, each a different way of putting the creator first.
Creator Sessions gave working photographers the editorial treatment usually saved for magazine features. In one, photographer Jason Travis walks through his kit: an Instax for behind-the-scenes surprises, a DJI drone for aerials, a Canon R5 as his workhorse, an '80s 35mm L35AF, and an iPhone because it's always in his pocket. The brand's job was to make that worth watching. Nothing more.
Preset Launches used community members' own photos as the demo. The High Beam series launch built its before-and-after around VSCO user shamaal's work, not a stock image or a brand shoot. The slider showed what the preset did, and whose community it belonged to.
Pro Spotlights gave members' professional practice the space it deserved. Photographer Will Milne's spotlight led with his own words for his work: 'vibrant minimalism'. Aerial shots of parking lots and tennis courts, hard light, bold colour, the AU5 preset pulling out the pinks and blues he was after. The brand's role was to find someone worth spotlighting and get out of the way.
Selects ran as monthly showcases: community photographs animated in VSCO's visual style, each creator's handle called out as their image appeared. No editorial voice. Just curation.
All four pillars ran on the motion system from VSCO 2.0, with each After Effects template rebuilt so the output felt distinct while the visual language held. That was the real design problem: a consistent identity across content that was, by definition, someone else's.