Armani Vertigo Lift
Campaign concepts and digital activation ideas for Armani Beauty’s Vertigo Lift Mascara launch, exploring surreal motion effects and interactive website elements to create a 'viral' moment.
Team: Ilan Belokon (Senior Designer), Jennifer Enriquez (Design Intern), Gini Lavore (Creative Direction), Samuel Reyes (Account Manager)
Armani Beauty sought an innovative digital concept to tease the launch of Vertigo Lift Mascara, a product designed to deliver extreme lift and length. The brief was intentionally open-ended, with only two key directives:
The mascara makes lashes appear longer and lifted.
Sydney Sweeney is the campaign ambassador.
Additionally, the brand was interested in unconventional, viral-worthy digital ideas that could integrate into Sephora’s website.
As a design intern, I worked alongside the senior designer to ideate, design, and present multiple creative directions. Our process began with curating mood boards, leading to over five initial concepts, later refined into three core ideas:
Sydney Sweeney’s takeover of social and digital platforms, using glitch effects to interrupt and reveal campaign visuals. The concept created a sense of disruption, intrigue, and unexpected digital distortion—a metaphor for the mind-bending effect of Vertigo Lift.
Glitch Reveal
Clicking the product banner redirects users to a simulated Sephora webpage, which gradually glitches and distorts, ultimately revealing the official product website.
Countdown Reveal
The Sephora and Armani Instagram accounts feature a glitching video that progressively reveals the product launch countdown.
Times Square Glitch Teaser
Large screens in Times Square display a glitching advertisement, gradually revealing a teaser ad for the mascara launch.
Use of Generative Type
A typography concept using coding elements to spell "Vertigo," designed for use in Instagram teasers, stories, and digital signage.
Playing with the elongation aspect of the mascara, visuals featured stretched pixels morphing into infinite striped patterns across screens, creating a mesmerizing and hypnotic effect that visually echoed the product’s key benefit: extreme length.
Digital Billboard & Subway Activation
Digital billboards and subway screens display distorted buildings and passersby, created through camera scanning. Additionally, the mascara product interacts with viewers, stretching and pulling itself back together as people approach.
Mascara Brush Effect Filter
A social media filter that mimics the effect of the mascara brush tool, creating blurred, striped line effects.
Sephora Page
Clicking on an Armani ad or product link on the Sephora page triggers a transitory animation sequence that blurs the webpage, mimicking the elongating effect of a mascara brush.
Fractal animations followed the mascara product, leading the viewer through a dynamic visual journey, reinforcing the trippy, vertigo-like sensation.
Fractal Banner Ads
Multi-fractal animation sequences that occur upon hover to be featured on the Sephora website
Lack of campaign assets
At the time of concept development, there were no product visuals, campaign shoots, or brand materials available—just two images of the mascara.
Solution: We embraced an experimental approach, focusing on digital effects and concept-driven design, manipulating the limited assets creatively.
Vague concept direction
With minimal guidance beyond the product name and a request for out-of-the-box thinking, we had to create meaning for Vertigo Lift ourselves.
Solution: We explored themes of motion, perception, and surrealism, aligning them with trendy, viral design aesthetics.
Platform Constraints
As a third-party retailer, Sephora only allowed limited site customisation, restricting Armani to banner placements. We refined our concepts to fit these constraints and worked with web developers to ensure feasibility while maintaining impact.
Using Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects, I created concept visuals and mockups showcasing digital interactions across Sephora’s website and social media. Despite limited assets, we developed bold, experimental ideas that aligned with Armani Beauty’s vision for Vertigo Lift. The product officially launched on February 10th in the U.S., with Armani further refining digital interactions to enhance the vertigo-like experience.
