How we created a set of fun and accessible custom digital assets to engage a community
Singapore Management University (SMU) wanted to strengthen its brand presence and community engagement through digital channels, but lacked a set of custom, on-brand assets that its community could use in everyday conversations. Existing festive e-cards were also due for a refresh, and there was a clear opportunity to replace them with something more versatile and shareable.
The mission
In the modern age, most things are going digital, from classes and office work to entertainment and even communication. It’s never been more important for organisations to have a digital footprint and presence.
Enter Brain Juice Collective (BJC). We were engaged to design a series of fun, animated custom sticker packs for WhatsApp and Telegram that reflected SMU's brand, culture, and community. The sticker packs needed to resonate across a wide audience, from current students and faculty to alumni, corporate partners, and the general public, while remaining true to SMU's brand guidelines and featuring the university's beloved mascot, Smoo.
The Brain Juice Approach
Our Starting Point
BJC's engagement on the SMU Stickers project was a natural extension of an already established working relationship. Having collaborated with SMU across multiple existing projects, there was no formal onboarding process required; both teams hit the ground running with a shared understanding of SMU's brand and ways of working.
The project was kicked off alongside the briefing for SMU's 25th Anniversary preparations, of which the sticker packs formed a part. BJC was simultaneously engaged on a separate scope covering a webpage for SMU, making this one of several concurrent workstreams running in parallel under the broader SMU partnership.
Our Role
The BJC Shift
Rather than presenting all concept proposals upfront in one go, we took an iterative approach, developing and proposing concepts progressively as each of the four sets was worked through.
What this did was allow the creative direction to evolve naturally across the sets, with each one building on the decisions and learnings from the previous, rather than locking everything in at the start before the full picture had taken shape.
A key part of BJC's process was grounding the designs in genuine community insight. Before putting pen to paper, the team researched what types of stickers were already trending, including the unofficial, student-made packs that had been organically circulating. This gave BJC a real sense of what resonated with the audience, which was then carefully merged with SMU's existing brand guidelines and the approved "Bubbly School Spirit" moodboard. The result was a sticker pack that felt authentically rooted in campus culture while remaining polished and officially on-brand.
On the creative side, BJC brought its own initiative to the table, specifically in choosing the Gen Z slogans for the 25th Anniversary set. While SMU had requested the use of Gen Z slang to appeal to the students, the specific choices, SIGMA, LIT!, GOAT, BUSSIN', and OTW, were BJC's creative input chosen to reflect expressions that felt genuinely relatable.
Our impact
What We Did
We ran two key workstreams for this project: Concept Development and Sticker Design.
The Concept Development phase involved researching current sticker trends, developing three concept proposals for sticker themes, and presenting these to SMU for review. All concepts were developed in line with SMU's brand guidelines, with two rounds of revision built in to incorporate SMU's feedback. This phase was essential to ensure that the creative direction was aligned with both the university's brand standards and the authentic visual language of its community before any design work began.
The Sticker Design phase covered the creation of four complete sticker sets: SMU 25th Anniversary, General Greetings, Festive/Holiday Greetings, and Student Life, totalling 32 individual stickers across static and animated formats. Each set was designed to serve a distinct conversational purpose, ensuring the final pack had broad enough coverage to be useful to the entire SMU community in a wide range of everyday situations.
All strategic decisions were guided by one mission: making SMU-branded content feel natural and effortless to use in everyday conversations. Anchoring the designs around Smoo ensured instant brand recognition while keeping the visual tone warm and approachable rather than institutional.
Ripples & Results
The SMU Stickers project was designed to create a lasting, everyday touchpoint between the university and its community. By giving students, faculty, staff, alumni, and external partners a set of fun, on-brand assets to use in their daily conversations, the sticker packs were intended to embed SMU's identity into the fabric of how the community communicates — organically and without effort.
For students in particular, the project represented something meaningful beyond just a design deliverable. Where unofficial, student-made sticker packs had previously filled the gap, SMU now had a formally endorsed, professionally designed alternative that reflected the same energy and authenticity that students had been seeking to express all along. The stickers gave the university a way to meet its community where they already were — in everyday WhatsApp and Telegram conversations — rather than expecting them to engage through more formal channels.
For SMU as a client, the project delivered a modern, versatile replacement for festive e-cards across a wide range of occasions, from milestone celebrations and daily greetings to festive seasons and student life moments. Rather than a one-size-fits-all asset, the four-set structure ensured the university had a comprehensive library of branded content that could serve the community throughout the year.
More broadly, the project contributed to strengthening SMU's brand recognition and shareability in digital spaces, with every sticker sent carrying the university's visual identity into conversations far beyond the campus community itself.
From an overview, our deliverables looked like this:
-4 sticker sets produced: SMU 25th Anniversary, General Greetings, Festive/Holiday Greetings, and Student Life
-32 individual stickers delivered in total across all four sets
-Mix of static and animated stickers across every set, broken down as follows:
Set 1 (SMU 25th Anniversary): 4 static + 3 animated = 7 stickers
Set 2 (General Greetings): 8 static + 3 animated = 11 stickers
Set 3 (Festive/Holiday Greetings): 8 static + 3 animated = 11 stickers
Set 4 (Student Life): 8 static + 3 animated = 11 stickers
Reflections
“One of the most notable aspects of this project was recognising early on that BJC would need to take a more proactive, guiding role throughout the process. As this was SMU's first foray into creating a formally designed sticker pack, there was naturally a higher degree of hand-holding required, and BJC embraced that willingly, leaning in to provide the creative direction, structure, and momentum needed to move the project forward at each stage.
Perhaps the biggest source of pride was simply seeing the project through to completion. The overall timeline stretched longer than originally anticipated due to unforeseen factors on the client's end, and navigating that with patience and professionalism while keeping the quality of work intact was no small feat. That the team delivered a complete, polished set of 32 stickers across four distinct categories — despite those challenges — speaks to BJC's commitment to seeing things through regardless of what comes up along the way.”
Anastacia Mendoza, Senior Portfolio Executive
Photo gallery
More reads for you
.png)
.png)
Forget the Trade-off
Subscribe for inspiration and insights on doing well while doing good. No spam, we promise!