Afro Tape

I started with the wordmark and a pattern system rooted in West African textile geometry, restrained for a contemporary editorial feel. The brand guideline doubles as an onboarding doc for every new hire — so the visual language scales without me in the room.

The system had to hold outside of screens too — on apparel, venue signage, and photographic treatments. I pushed the palette, pattern language, and wordmark into physical touchpoints so Afro Tape felt like a lived culture brand, not just a product UI.

v1 shipped fast in Framer to validate positioning. v2 added a richer storytelling layer, motion-driven hero, and a content system the team can edit without me. Both sites taught us what users actually came to Afro Tape for — and that answer became the marketplace.

Designed and shipped the full creative OS on Lovable. Pillar one — a global marketplace where vetted talent (videographers, photographers, costume designers, multidisciplinary studios) get booked all year, with secure escrow protecting every transaction. Pillar two — professional studio management from one dashboard: file sharing, scheduling, payments. Pillar three — secure project funding so creatives stop chasing invoices. Pillar four — direct content sales to clients and fans, getting creatives paid instantly instead of waiting on royalty cycles.

Afro Tape isn't a design hand-off — I built it. Lovable for the front-end, Supabase for auth, escrow ledger, role-based access (providers vs. buyers), and the marketplace data model. Paystack for card payments, payouts and split flows. Two distinct user systems sharing one product surface — buyers brief, fund, and release escrow; providers list, deliver, and withdraw. Database schema, RLS policies, payment webhooks, and the live site are all mine.

The marketing site mirrors the product — sections that show exactly what you'll do inside the app.

The app cleared review and is live on the App Store, with the Android build coming out of the same codebase. It got there through a TestFlight wave and a paid bug-bounty — ₦5,000 per qualifying system bug — that pressure-tested the marketplace, escrow and split-sheets before public launch.

Marketplace hiring with escrow-held payments and invoices. Studio booking plus full studio management — rooms, equipment, team. Equipment rentals. Publishing with split-sheets and proof of ownership. AfroCoin, the payout and rewards layer. A campus ambassador programme and a student tier. Each one designed, built and shipped inside the same brand system.

We organised an event with the Department of Creative Arts at the University of Lagos. I designed the roll-up banners and flyers — every flyer carried a QR code straight into the Afro Tape signup flow. The room did the rest.

Built a flexible template library in Figma and Canva, then handed daily execution to the Social Manager while I direct the bigger-swing illustrations, the brand film, and the how-to video series.

I produced a short how-to series to walk users through the core actions — booking a studio session and booking a service. Clean screen recordings with tight pacing so the product speaks for itself.

I designed and continue to art-direct Afro Tape's social presence — a flexible system of post templates, story frames, campaign keys that stretch across awareness, trust, and product education.

I helped hire and onboard the Product Manager who restructured operations, and the Social Media Manager driving day-to-day content. The brand guideline and template systems were designed so they could move fast without me in the loop.