This Week I Created Some Rules For My Logo. My Logo Is Interesting Because It’s Rather Playful In Nature
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.
More Posts from Saraholmesdesign and Others
Final Portfolio Response
First of all, here’s my portfolio website!
I’m pretty proud of my portfolio overall. I remember starting this class and not being able to fathom at all how I could self-brand myself. It has been a period of self-reflection these last few months and while i’m glad to be through it, I know it’s never ever. Despite having the base of my website, there are a few things that I’d like to fix.
So learning Semplice has been a trial and a half. If you want my honest review, if you already don’t know how to use wordpress and you on’t have time to learn a whole new system, do not choose semplice for your first go. Just be a friend to yourself and choose a squarespace or wix template and then try semplice later. I’m saving you a lot of pain by saying this. Still, I’m glad I’ve put in the work and I vaguely get it now.
That being said, there’s some weird spacing that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to deal with. Semplice prides itself on how easy it is to edit but unless you already know how to use it, it’s really not. So I guess I’m going to figure out how to deal with the big gap between the footer and my information in my about page somehow.
Otherwise all I really want to do is update some of my images in my project pages. For example, my balanced. project page could use a mockup of the booklet or a shoot of the booklet. I’ll try to get that when the print shop opens again.
I’d also like to eventually add light boxes to my photography and illustrations page.
Other than those items, I’m pleased with it.
Having completed my Logo and drafted my brand standards, I began trying to figure out ways to apply my brand. Here’s what I came up with for my presentation.
Unfortunately, I still have a lot to do on my portfolio but I’m not really mad about it. I chose to work with Semplice which is a plugin for WordPress. This meant I had to learn a whole new system! while it’s been a learning curve, I don’t have any regrets. While not very intuitive, it’s a beautiful, clean system. I’m pleased so far with what I have and also feel comfortable taking my time.
Things to do:
design the footer + what I want in it -> eg, contact info?
about page (or just put it on our main page.)
grid layout separate for each page?
photoshoot for new nav once newest issue launches?
More sketches exported for my little joys page
create asset library
reevaluate my case study and redraft.
remember to keep it minimal and stretch from there.
Day Five - Blog Post #6
Today we got started on redesigning a package of our choice. It’s a project I was kind of looking forward to since I first saw my friends working on it two years ago!
I had two packages I wanted to work on at the start of conceptualizing. One of them was an easy choice, an over packaged, instant matcha tea satchet, four box extra, plastic wrapped disaster.
The other, was a beautiful knife pushed inside a plastic cage.
Though I knew which one would be easiest for me, something about the knife called to me. I started to paint pictures in my head of what my package could be and I knew, in the end, that was the one that I wanted to do.
I have started ideating and drawing thumbs but I think I know what I’m heading towards. I want my audience to really enjoy their experience of opening the package to reveal their tool, in the same excited way that a graphic designer might unwrap their gorgeous apple packaging to reveal a macbook.
To a culinary student or worker, a pairing knife is the ultimate tool, like the macbook is to the graphic designer. Both are equally important, both give the same delight and ease of use.
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’.
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?
Case Study Draft
Project Title Balanced.
Class Name Design Research Project
Date of Completion 11/29/2019
My Role Art Director
Summary Balanced. is an organization focused on promoting a healthy work/life balance that I designed in the final year of my degree. It is an integrated ecosystem focused on providing a healthier schedule for those that tend to overwork themselves.
Project Challenge
Possible header photo: Waving/animated Ish with the balanced. logo Overwork is dangerous for not only your mental health but your physical health as well. working more than 55 hours a week raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. At this point in time, overworking yourself can officially be a cause of death. Something needs to be done. The challenge lies in ‘What’ and ‘How’? How do we change the way a whole society perceives work/life balance in an appealing way, especially when the target audience is most likely too busy to go through and set up a whole system?
Strategy/Methodology Show pic of Ish
Using myself and my own experiences as a key target audience, I realized that the most important aspect of Balanced. had to be a simple entry point. A simple voice command system in the form of a smart speaker program would be necessary and from there, the rest flowed. The system would be wrapped around the central character of a little AI robot named Ish.
Ish can be likened to a little assistant that lives inside the user’s phone. It helps plan the user’s day, sends messages to ask how the user is feeling, sends the user on forced breaks and is the face of the Balanced system.
Show Ish screens
Design Process Identification Conceptualization Ideation Show ideation/drafts of Ish Show logo ideation (sketches and final)
brand ideation Production Revision & Feedback Deliverables
Solution/Contribution Show images of the completed booklet, al stages of the ecosystem Balanced has been developed to become a foil that fits snugly around the user’s life. At the beginning of integration, Balanced studies the user’s day to day activities using the deliverables that will be described in the coming pages.
This sounds like a lot, but Balanced knows that not everyone has the time to set a whole system up, so it has been designed with the intention of ease of access. Balanced will bring awareness to the issue of overwork and what it does to an individual’s mental and physical health. It will impact the way that people value their time and themselves as a person and deconstruct the idea that overworking oneself is admirable.
Balanced is an app, a smart speaker, a website, a watch integration, a friend, a secretary and a resource. Takeaways - This project taught me a lot about the design process from start to finish and also showed me that everything starts from a poor looking sketch but end well depending on the amount of effort and skill you put in.
