Exploring Brand Marketing Campaign Concepts for Tarte Cosmetics
Early-stage concept explorations across campaigns, promotions, & digital storytelling, supporting creative alignment before execution.
Tools: Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Firefly (AI), Canva, Pinterest, Microsoft Office
Collaboration: Brand Marketing, Digital Marketing, Creative Teams
Role: Digital Creative Intern at Tarte
Timeline: 12 weeks (Fall 2025)
Focuses: Concept Development, Visual Strategy, Brand Exploration
Alongside production-focused digital design work, I contributed to early stage creative ideation & concept development for Tarte as the Digital Creative Intern. These projects reflects how I translate research and brand systems into visual concepts that support creative collaboration and shape stronger campaign, promotional, and digital ideas.
My work spanned multiple areas of exploration, including campaign mood boards, promotional website and retail concepts, digital gifting, social media logo exploration, and product packaging ideas. Each design was created to help visualize how Tarte’s identity could evolve while remaining cohesive and on-brand.
Summary
Tarte is a global beauty brand known for its high-performing products, bold visual identity, and trend-driven approach to marketing. The brand consistently taps into internet culture, playful storytelling, and interactive ideas to create moments that feel timely, shareable, and culturally relevant, often turning launches and promotions into viral conversations across social platforms.
This emphasis on experimentation and creativity has made Tarte especially recognizable in a fast-paced industry where staying relevant means constantly evolving how products are introduced, celebrated, and experienced.
What is Tarte Cosmetics?
Our Objectives
Explore creative directions that extend Tarte’s brand across campaigns, promotions, gifting, and retail moments
Support early-stage ideation through visual concepts that help teams align before execution
Test how tarte’s brand system can flex while remaining cohesive and recognizable
The Opportunity:
As a fast-moving, campaign-led brand, Tarte must continually explore new creative directions to keep campaigns feeling fresh while maintaining a cohesive visual system. Early-stage concepting plays a critical role in this process, helping teams test ideas, explore possibilities, and align on direction before committing to production.
The opportunity for this project was to explore how Tarte’s brand could extend across digital, social, & retail moments through thoughtful, brand-forward concepts grounded in real marketing use cases, supporting creative alignment early in the process.
To explore how Tarte’s Shape Tape concealer could celebrate its 10-year milestone, I developed four distinct campaign mood board concepts centered around birthday & celebration themes.
My process began with researching visual and cultural trends tied to milestone celebrations, followed by curating imagery via Pinterest to define the tone, texture, and overall atmosphere for each concept.
Campaign Mood Boards: Shape Tape’s 10 Year Celebration
From there, I designed type-focused logo explorations to help reinforce each concept’s identity and narrative. This approach allowed me to develop multiple creative directions that felt distinct from one another while still aligning with the overarching campaign objective.
View four different campaign concepts:
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10 Out of 10
A playful, ultra-feminine birthday celebration built around the idea that Shape Tape has always been a 10. Soft pastels, champagne tones, cakes, and whimsical party details celebrate confidence, consistency, and “marie antoinette” elements with an elevated, yet edgy, girly twist.
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X Marks the Spot
A unique concept inspired by treasure hunts, pirates and hidden gems, playing on the idea that while X marks the spot, Shape Tape covers it. Rich textures, gold highlights, pearls, vintage elements, and deep reds create a sense of discovery, mystery, and treasure.
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Shape Tape on the Cape
A summer-forward, lifestyle-inspired celebration rooted in beachy elegance. Drawing from “coastal grandma” aesthetics, this concept uses soft blues, linens, shells, and seaside details to convey longevity, ease, and timeless appeal.
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Era of Xo
A bold, fashion-forward interpretation of a 10-year milestone, using the “X” as both a numerical marker and “kisses” mark. This direction blends sparkly glam nightlife energy with edgy femininity, positioning Shape Tape as iconic, timeless, and unapologetically confident.
Promotional & Brand Extension Concepts
As part of my internship, I contributed to a range of promotional and brand extension concepts, rooted in creative & brand marketing, designed to live across web, social, and retail environments. Each project explored how Tarte’s playful, feminine identity could translate into interactive moments, digital gifting, and in-store visibility.
“Free Mystery Charm” Gondola Logo
I developed logo concepts for a “Free Mystery Charm” promotion intended for retail gondola displays. This work focused on high-visibility design, legibility from a distance, and playful storytelling.
I used AI-assisted tools like Adobe firefly, to explore charm-inspired typography and incorporated Tarte’s official charm assets to ensure consistency with the brand’s established visual language.
“All Access” Social Media Campaign
“All Access” was a social media concept that required early logo exploration to help establish tone and direction.
I created multiple logo variations to test hierarchy, typography, and lockups, exploring how the concept could scale across social formats while remaining clear, recognizable, and on-brand.
Website Spin-to-Win Wheel Overlays
I designed a collection of spin-to-win wheel overlay duo-page concepts for Tarte’s website, intended to encourage email and SMS sign-ups through an interactive discount experience.
I reviewed previous Tarte executions (shown on the right), researched competitive beauty brands, and explored variations in color, typography, background imagery, and wheel configurations. The goal was to balance conversion-driven UX with a fun, on-brand visual moment that felt exciting rather than transactional.
E-Gift Card Design Concepts
For e-gift cards, I focused on image-based designs that showcased Tarte’s personality and visual identity. These concepts explored how digital gifting could feel expressive and elevated while remaining flexible across email, mobile, and checkout experiences, transforming a functional asset into a branded moment.
In similar process to the digital wheels, I reviewed previous versions (shown on the right), researched competitive beauty brands, and explored multiple variations.
Product Packaging Explorations:
As part of my concept development projects, I contributed to early-stage product packaging ideation focused on exploring how Tarte’s brand could extend into physical product moments. These explorations considered both individual product details and bundled offerings, emphasizing storytelling, brand consistency, and giftability while supporting internal creative discussions before production.
Mascara Cap Design Concepts
I explored updated mascara cap designs that introduced fun on-brand patterns as well as a new approach to cap detailing, with the primary design placed at the top of the cap and extending seamlessly along the sides.
This exploration focused on how small packaging details could elevate the product experience while staying aligned with Tarte’s playful, recognizable brand system.
Founder Birthday Bundle Concept
I also contributed to a limited-edition product bundle concept created as a potential celebratory moment for Maureen Kelly’s birthday. The bundle featured a mascara, lip plumper, and freckle stamper and was envisioned as a cohesive, giftable set that highlighted hero products while reinforcing tarte’s brand personality.
Although the bundle was ultimately not launched, this exploration strengthened my experience in concepting product-driven moments, balancing creativity with brand standards, and designing within real-world constraints.
Impact & Takeaways:
Across these projects, I gained hands-on experience translating brand identity into real marketing touchpoints, from interactive website moments to social concepts and retail signage. This work strengthened my ability to concept within an established brand system, explore multiple creative directions efficiently, and support collaborative ideation before execution.