Day 6 - Blog Post #7

DAY TEN - BLOG POST #12

The aim for this stretch of the project was to create thumbs, mapped layouts and sketch model mockups. It’s hard however to get the appropriate size when you don’t really know how much space 250 grams of Good Life Granola is going to take up. 

Now, something I was told to work on was my ideation component so I worked really hard to come up with at least 50 thumbs to work with. I’m not the type to put myself into a box (*bdm tss*) so I found that just letting my pencil take up the space it wanted was the best way to go for me. This created a bit of a flow of ideas rather than me just trying to fill little squares with thoughts. Sometimes, you need to think outside of the box. (*bdmmmm tsssss*)

Here are the ideas I came up with.

I wanted to make sure that I worked through as many shapes as I possibly could think of to be thorough about the ideation period. Although I came up with some really fun, crazy shape ideas, I found myself drawn to a simple box for ease of production and cost when it came to the packaging and decided to develop those concepts further.

After fleshing those out a bit more, I decided to just sit down and have fun. I forgot how much I loved this part of the ideation and creation period. Although I messed up a couple of times, I didn’t let that frustrated me and instead just enjoyed the tactile puzzle I was dealing with. 

These are the design solutions I have come up with thus far:

I can’t wait to get proper measurements down so that I have a better idea of what I’m working with. I’m not even sure at all which one I like best so far, although I can tell you that the most interesting one to try and create was definitely the rectangle with the pour spout! (I thought my brain was combusting a little bit as I tried to visualize what I had to do in my head.)

Client Survey

General Company Info 

What is the name of your company?  Place

What is your business/what do you do?  Place provides a single location for a range of events in Nanaimo’s downtown core. It can be a pop-up market, a venue for a reception, an intimate concert, a wedding, a dance, an art class, the possibilities are endless.

How old is your company?  The company has yet to exist.

What is the size of your company? A small core of people involved in bettering downtown Nanaimo. two people leading a small team of 5-6.

Are there specific dates the project needs to be completed?  No.

Your budget dictates how much time can be spent on your project. What is the budget?  Open

Describe your business in one sentence.  No matter what event you are hosting, this is the place for it.

Describe your business in two words? Convenient, Reliable

Describe your business in one word? Perfect

What doesn’t your business do, or do well? Does not host large concerts, or sporting events.

What differentiates your business from competitors? Ease of access, Place’s main interest isn’t how much money can be made but in creating a place for the community to use without burning a hole in people’s wallets.

Is there a story that is unique to your company? When searching for a location for a grad show, Sara realized that there really wasn't’ anywhere in the downtown core that was appropriately sized or available for a small reception.

Or perhaps a unique story to the company name?  Every city should have a place, somewhere that you can go that would be good for a range of events, but also a safe please for youth to hang out and host community events.

What are your business objectives?  To create a beautiful place to host events that can host a range of things from shows, events, receptions, to tourist attractions in the summer months like a large market or informational sessions.

What do you want the design/redesign to do for your company?  I want it to give the company a modern look and feel that is also welcoming to the community.

General Image of Company 

If you company/brand was a person who would it be? Why? I don’t know if it would be a person so much as a representation or even an animal. Place should be able to represent Nanaimo and the future of Nanaimo and its community. If anything, I’d say that I’d want it to be represented by the Orca because of its sense of community and ties to the Salish sea.

Is there an important object, building or person for your business? The building for this business is what makes the business and it would be located right downtown, on the water.

How do you want the public to perceive your image?  A meeting hall, a place that represents Nanaimo, a sense of place for Nanaimo. It should feel like home but also fresh.

What do you want to be famous for?  Being the place that people go to when they need a place.

What words should the general public associate your business with? Name at least 3. Modern, Inviting, Perfect

How do you want your image to be seen in 2 years? 10 years?  Comfortable, familiar, renowned

Competitors 

Who are your competitors?  Vancouver Island Conference Center, Port Theatre

How are they better/worse than your product/service?  Vancouver Island Conference Center has a larger space to host larger events, Port theatre has better space for theatrical events.

Who might you compete with in the future? More developments. 

The Target Audience 

Who is your customer? Describe in detail. My customer is anyone who is looking to use a space but is having trouble finding a good venue for it. A lot of people in Nanaimo have to settle for a venue that isn’t necessarily ideal and we are lacking a community spot. 

What do they do?  Live in Nanaimo and actively work towards bettering the downtown community via productions or events.

What do they watch? Community productions, local musicians, short plays, open mics.

Who is the ideal customer? Someone who perhaps wants to bring more culture to the city but lacks the funding/space.

How old is your ideal customer? 20-60

How do they find out about you? Through advertisements downtown, facebook, Nanaimo’s website

What do they want from you?  A place to host an event.

What customers do you not want to attract?  People who want to host an extremely large event or have the money to do so elsewhere. (Large corporate events that exceed capacity)  

What do you offer your customers that your competition does not? A place that can be molded easily to fit their needs. The place isn’t designed a certain way to format one specific thing so it means its a space that can be used for a variety of things without many spacial issues.

Current identity 

Do you have an identity?  No

What are two identities or logos that you like? Dislike? I like the CBC logo and the CNR logo. I don’t like the Nanaimo Chamber logo   

What colours do you like? Dislike?  I like sunset colours and when you just use multiple shades. I don’t like intense greens or dull colours.

Anything else? 

What did we not ask that you want us to understand? The Place isn’t like anything that’s already in Nanaimo because it isn’t held back by a small size or a regular business, it isn’t meant to make money from events, just enough to cover expenses. It’s meant to be somewhere rentable that people can use to host a variety of events and promote community within Nanaimo.

Day One - Blog Post #1

I knew that class would be good today when we walked in and there was a picture of an egg on the powerpoint. I thought we were probably going to talk abt how an egg is a naturally good package, I didn’t think that we were going to have the opportunity to try and design a safe package for an egg in 20 minutes!

We weren’t given a lot of direction other than to make the package, so my group wondered if we were supposed to focus on appearance, function or perhaps both. We decided to go for both and used two rolls of duck tape to encase the egg, paper to cushion it and then we wrapped it in foam. We also gave our package a little bit of decoration in the form of a pipecleaner bow and an origami butterfly. 

I think we focused too much on the appearance of the package instead of putting as much focus on the function. Our package was poorly taped and when Nancy shoved it off the table, unfortunately, the package burst a bit and the eggshell got a crack in it.

It was really fun to do something so fast and right away and got our brains thinking for the rest of the day!

We learned how to score paper using a bone tool and tried it out ourselves on a box shape. So far, I’m really enjoying how hands on this class is.

Our assignment for this next week is to take a package that we were given in class and reproduce it three times, let’s see how it turns out!

Something to reflect on: We’re always wanting to think of the environment as graphic designers but when it comes to packaging and brand, brand needs to come first for a corporation. I think that makes it the graphic designer’s job, to provide a sustainable design for the company in question from the get-go. When redesigning for a brand, however, and working for someone like coca-cola who uses tons and tons of plastic each year but is so iconic, how much room does a designer have to play and is it that designer’s duty to do what they can to help the environment even if it means deviating from brand standards? Is it possible to stick to brand standards with the environment in mind?

We’ve Got Shapes

So step one was to make some rough shapes on my ipad and then bring them into illustrator to make them into vectors. I tried to keep the style similar to the circle so that they would all match well and ended up with this:

Alright, not bad. You’ve got a square to promote balance, structure and in a more abstract sense, community and integrity. The circle represents wholeness, infinity, oneness. The triangle is known to be the strongest shape to build with as any weight placed on them is evenly distributed amongst the sides. Triangles also represent harmony.

Placing them in a line like this makes them look a little like building blocks, or children’s toys. The idea is that you can build Place into a space you need it to be.

Rough: verb.work or shape (something) in a rough, preliminary fashion."flat surfaces of wood are roughed down"

That’s a cool meaning and it applies well to Place because it’s supposed to be a space that you can make your own during use. 

Just to be sure, I also tried out smoothing out the shapes so that I could see whether a rough shape or a smooth shape would be better.

At this point, I’m still undecided. I feel like rough and smooth have very different meenings to me. I like the way the rough one looks because it feels more organic and handmade, which is the type of community I’m trying to promote and reach with place. I want Place to be like a community hub and don’t want it to come across too polished.

On the other hand, I want Place to still appeal to higher-end events as well, despite the playful atmosphere of the logo shapes. In that sense, I think the smoother shapes could do better. I also know that the smoother shape would shrink down easier, and probably be easier to work within the long run. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to choose one or the other. There may be opportunities to use both styles depending on the event. 

Let’s Take a Sec Here

So last week, I took my hundred thumbs and whittled them down to three choices. Those three choices didn’t really feel that great so I started working on more thumbs but found that throughout them, I was fixated on geometry. I was drawing cubes, cones, triangles and a lot of circles. I thought that was maybe just me doodling mindlessly.

Perhaps it was or maybe it was my brain compartmentalizing my thinking, literally putting my thoughts into boxes to be taken off the shelf and stacked up later until I had the semblance of a thing. Design, in all of its facets, can be boiled down to one thing: making things. Sometimes our brains make in chunks first and we work so closely with those chunks that we don’t realize there’s a whole big picture we’ve missed until someone else points out what’s been right under your nose all along. 

Last week my prof took my circle design and asked me why I didn’t just continue with that, but with a whole line of slightly wobbly geometry. I want to show you my emotions about that through this excellent clown illustration above by @nerimative on instagram. 

As you can see, it perfectly displays the feeling within when one performs the blunder described by my oma as ‘looking with your nose instead of your eyes’.

Anyway, back to it.

Competitor Analysis

My main competitor for Place is the Nanaimo Entertainment Centre. This is the only sort of location downtown that serves a similar purpose to what I’m going for with Place, even then, it isn’t quite the same. The Entertainment Centre is an old movie theatre that offers the use of the entire building for $500/24 hrs.

Unfortunately for me, the centre does not seem to have any actual branding and is sadly, a building that seems to be in disuse. When I walked through it, I felt this vast feeling inside me, nostalgia for a past I didn’t participate in and awe at the high ceilings. The place is a gem in the downtown core that gets overlooked because the building itself is in disrepair and it is not much to look at from the outside. With some proper branding and some money poured into it, I think it could be a good competitor for what I want Place to be. Still, the goal of the entertainment centre is to offer a rental location for various events in the community for a relatively cheap cost. 

Unfortunately, the competitor analysis for the group that I was in for class was far too different to be of use to me. My group was dealing with tour companies, a museum and a water taxi service so costs and branding were all over the place. My audience is also different as they are not tourists, but members of the community who I want to be tourists in their own city.

Learning about the Entertainment Centre only cemented my feeling that Place would be a good fit for Nanaimo.

Day Nine - Blog Post #11

Project 2 Creative Brief: Granola Package Design for Good Life Juice

Objectives 

My goal is to create a sustainable series of packages for Good Life Juice’s new Granola line that stays true to the brand while being economically responsible for the producer (production costs and impact) and the environment. It should reflect Good Life Juice’s brand while being design smart. By that I mean that the design should be lasting and not follow trends, it should be something that my client can use for many years. I want to make something that will appeal to both men and women because my client said that 80% of her current clientele is female. Interestingly, 75% of her workforce is also female and that is something I want to showcase with the packaging as well. 

The goal isn’t to scare men away from it though. So we’re looking for something more in the middle. My client also specified that she would like the packaging to be ‘classy, beautiful and femme’. 

I already know that I want to make something super environmentally friendly that will match the way Good Life presents itself and strives to be. I found a Canadian Website that prints on seed paper and that’s a route I would really like to go down.

I also want to focus on the life cycle of the granola and the juice pulp involved in it. From start to finish, this granola is environmentally involved and I think this story is important. My client also mentioned that if my package contains plastic, she would like instructions for the user on how to recycle the plastic so that it is eco-responsible as a package and I think that’s really something I’d like to include if I go that route.

Audience

My client is expecting a wider range audience than she usually gets for her juices so I’m going to say that my audience ranges from the late twenties to people in their mid-sixties who are focused on their health and do not mind spending a little bit more on their granola! I have my parents as the perfect test audience as they are both on a health kick right now and have started to take an interest in good design because of my field of study.

In my head, I have three basic users I want to design for. Here is a quick set of notes on each:

Karen Whitmarsh - 28

Interests include maintaining mental and physical health through juice cleanses, yoga and daily exercise. She shops at Whole Foods because she likes buying locally and organic. She’s on the market for a new granola and already drink Good Life Juice. She’s considered GLJ’s granola before but has yet to buy it because the package underwhelms her in comparison to some of the other more sustainable packaging found at Whole Foods.

Jordan Bickeridge - 35

Jordan spent most of his twenties binge drinking at parties, smoking cigarettes and not really worrying about his health and now regrets it. He is brand new to the world of health foods and just wants to buy a granola that will be healthy for him and is worth his money. He wants to go into the granola/cereal aisle at Whole Foods and just grab a package probably based on what it says. 

Elia Yang - 62

Elia has been eating raw and organic for the last five years and has finally gotten her wife on board with her. The two of them love drinking smoothies in the morning and are now looking for a filling snack that also satisfies their sweet tooth. They read online that granola was a great thing to just toss in their purse. Both of them love pretty packaging but hate waste and will likely buy packaging that appeals to them environmentally as well as aesthetically. 

As you can see, this is a pretty wide range but that was the vibe I got from our client meeting today. I think it will be a fun challenge to meet these audience expectations.

Desired Response

I feel happy buying this granola because I know that it is eco-friendly and has the ingredients I want from it to make me feel healthy and whole. 

Creative Considerations

This is NOT Mom n’ Pop’s granola. The packaging must be beautiful, high-end and gorgeous. 

My client wants to be transparent with her customers, she hates it when packages say things like ‘all-natural’ and hates pushy packages.

HAS TO BE CLASSY.

No trends, no geometry, chevrons or primary colours as per my client’s taste.

Must be careful of food packaging regulations to Canada standards.

The packaging must have the essence of the Good Life Juice brand.

I can’t go overboard with materials, it needs to be affordable for my client. 

The package should be sustainable but not look ‘hokey’. 

Design Thinking  - Tim Brown

‘Design Thinking’ by Tim Brown is an article about the development of design thinking in the ideation stage of a project and how it has led to new ideas that have flourished due to the consideration of the human element.

It’s always interesting to discover a new facet of the design process and while I believe that Design Thinking is something that we have been integrating into our learning for the past couple years, it’s nice to take a more in-depth look at it and this article is an easy introduction.

Here are my key takeaways:

Innovation = design thinking. One follows the other, you can invent on your own but it won’t ever get far without other’s input and without thinking of the human element.

The design process has been reimagined in the sense that designers no longer come in late to the project but are involved from the beginning and are often even asked to help with the design of the actual product/program.

Design Thinking is only growing as a ‘trade’ as economies shift from physical products to knowledge-based outcomes.

Succesful design thinkers are empathetic, integrative thinkers, optimistic, experimental and collaborative.

I found this case study for a portable incubator called Embrace. Embrace was developed with the idea of keeping premature babies alive by offering a portable incubator to families that live far from the hospital. What I like about this piece is the objective behind it, and a key message in the article.

“Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

This project really focuses in on the people using it and went through a couple iterations before being finalized. It took feedback from users in the areas it was wanting to help seriously and that’s what made it successful. If they’d only designed something and sent it out to people without consideration, the project would have failed. This article does a good job of showing that.

covid got me feeling like the world is a simulation

This week I created some rules for my logo. My logo is interesting because it’s rather playful in nature and there’s a lot that can be done with it. I have three possible marks that can be used to represent place and four base colours to play with as well. 

This base set of rules is a good way to get me going on my brand guide. There’s a lot more to implement though, and I’m excited to keep going.