Project 2 Theme: Water
Daniel Apt I am Apt FdA Design for Graphic Communication Year 2 1
Introduction
This PDF documents the whole process of Project 2, which started on the 7th of January, and was concluded on the 14th of March. This was a collaborative project and the team members were: Daniel Apt Joana Fernandes Hasan Gözlügöl Alex Lloyd, Theo Mayers. This is the PDF of Daniel Apt. For more information about me, please visit I am Apt.
2
Table of Contents
Defining 3. Audition Tape 4. Forming the Team 5. The Team 8. Exploration 9. Initial Findings 10. Further Research 11. Expert Sessions 12. Issues 13. Ideas 14. Brief 15. Target Audience
First outcome 16. 17. 18. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
Strategy Containers Choice of Produce Branding Message Website Outcome Pitch Feedback
Final outcome 26. 27. 28. 29. 31. 33.
Ideas, again. Produce Bottle Labels Posters Outcome Reflection
3
Audition Tape “I want to let people know what I’m good at, what I’m bad at, and what I’m looking for. ”
I created a simple animation. Initially I attempted to use AfterEffects, but failed to understand how to use it. In the end I created my audition tape with Adobe Flash. Although it feels awkward, I decided to use my voice in the audition tape. Visually people can have a style, but I also believe people have a verbal, or auditory style. I hoped that my style of talking and thinking would come across in the audition tape.
4
Watch video
Forming the Team “Everybody needs to be good at something I’m bad at. ”
Whilst viewing the audition tapes I was taking notes of everybody’s mentioned skills. I wanted and needed people with complementary skill sets.
I was especially looking for people who were good at crafts, photography, drawing, and the more visual aspects of design.
5
The Team “We’re going to rock this brief! ”
•
We all agree to communicate well within the group
•
Punctuality and reliability must be kept
•
Work hard and give a shit
•
Fulfil expectations. Don’t bottle emotions
•
Respect the group
•
Don’t be a cock
•
Give a 100%
•
Only constructive criticism allowed
•
No egos
Daniel Apt, Joana Fernandes, Hasan Gözlügöl, Alex Lloyd, and Theo Mayers
As was advised, we used a blog to keep track of all our research, prototypes, findings, ideas, and more. Click here to visit our blog: Four&1. We had decided to name ourselves Four&1 for two reasons. The group existed out of four DGC students and one GMD students. It also existed out of four male, and one female member. Luckily that’s the only distinction we made between team members, we treated each other as equals.
6
Label
As a team we had an impressive broad range of skills. Based on our skills and personality we created the following roles.
Hasan: Resource / Plant Theo: Plant / Coordinator Alex: Shaper / Finisher Daniel: Motivator / Evaluator / Coordinator Joana: Implementer
7
Exploration “We’ve got to know everything we can about water. How it works, how we use it, how we perceive it, and everything in between. ”
We divided our initial research into five categories: Water Resources (Joana) How is our water spread across the world? Where does it come from? Where does it go? Economics of Water (Alex) How much does water cost? Looking into the monetisation of water, in bottled water. What economic benefits does water have? Water consumption (Hasan)
Environmental/Ecological (Daniel)
How do humans use and consume water, in their daily life and household?
In which environmental and ecological issues does water play a role?
Cultural and Historical Role of Water (Theo) How do we perceive water, and how has it been perceived in the past?
8
Initial Findings “We’ve got to know everything we can about water. How it works, how we use it, how we perceive it, and everything in between. ”
We presented our initial research, and it was positively received. Tutors likedWt how we had broadly researched the subject, and categorised our findings.
After this first session we resumed our research, in our chosen fields.
9
Further Research “More, more, and even more research… ”
After our first session, we resumed our research in the different categories we had chosen. The most important pieces of research were: It has been proven that pesticides can reach waterbearing aquifers below ground. 1mm of rain on a surface 1m2 is worth 1 litre of water. 3% of the Earth’s water is fresh water. Of this 3%, only 1% is drinkable. That is 0.003%. “It concludes the true value of water is not adequately reflected by the current pricing, but concedes that increasing water prices is always going to be a difficult political decision as domestic water usage is considered a basic human right.” — BBC
10
Expert Sessions “We’ve got to go to as many sessions as possible, opportunities like this don’t happen often. ”
In week 12 we had the chance to attend many expert sessions. It is a daunting task to figure out who should attend what session. Luckily Joana was right, she is an organisational champion, and we had signed up for the sessions the very same day they got announced! We all used the blog to share our notes from the lectures. I myself found Tony Allan’s lecture extremely insightful. In particular, Angela Morelli’s work on Virtual Water was very eye-opening. We discovered that a big issue with water-related issues is the fact that water is invisible.
11
Issues “Think issue first, idea second. ”
In our research, both primary and secondary, we discovered many existing water related issues: •
•
Wasting water hardly has any financial effect, which makes people care less when they do waste water. Nobody knows how much water they actually are using. This is due to the lack of feedback people get, whilst using water.
•
Bottled water is a lot more expensive, and polluting, than tap water.
•
A huge amount of canals are not being put to use, which is a waste of water, space, and opportunities.
•
Importing produce from overseas increases a nation’s water foot print.
12
•
Pesticides are used in the production of non-organic fruit and vegetables. These pesticides get in to underground water aquifers.
•
People don’t understand their position in the global and urban water cycle.
In the end we chose the following issue: Pesticides are used in the production of non-organic fruit and vegetables. These pesticides get in to underground water aquifers.
Ideas “Let’s get our idea really out there. It must be more than just an idea. ”
As a result of our chosen issue we needed to stop, or at least decrease the production of nonorganic fruit and vegetables. A lot of producers are not located in the UK, and thus we decided to focus more on consumers, which would be based in the UK. Now we had three main ideas: 1. Get people to buy organic fruit and vegetables, and teach them how to grow their own food as well. 2. Use aquaponics to grow food in the canals. 3. Grow food in office buildings, for the office staff. In the end we chose idea no. 1.
13
Brief “Stick to the brief. Always. �
Create a campaign that motivates young-professionals to buy organic fruit and vegetables.
14
Target Audience “Young-professionals are the people we need to approach. ”
Even though our pesticide related issue was complex, the solution was relatively easy. We needed people to buy organic. In our research we discovered organic is more expensive, and this means not everyone is able to buy organic. Students, in particular, did not buy organic. They did not care, and did not have the financial budget to change their buying behaviour. But after graduating a student would start to earn more, and still buy non-organically. These young-professionals were the people we needed to approach. They are able to buy organically, but they don’t atnd not due to financial restrictions, but more due to lack of awareness.
15
Strategy “I like the way you guys are thinking, it is a very mature and strategic approach. �
During the ideation process we came up with the idea of using a plant pot as medium. The plant pot would be a metaphor for organically produced fruit and vegetables. Using a plant as medium will make the message last a lot longer than a poster or flyer. The whole strategy was based upon mystery and rewards. The campaign could be summarised as follows: The user picks up a mysterious pot, upon registering the pot’s code on our website we get hold of his email, and the user learns how to take care of his plant. During the growing process we check how is plant is doing and keep informing him about organic fruit and vegetables.
16
Containers “Our target audience does not have gardens, the plant must grow in a container, and stay in that container. �
The plant container needed to be eco-friendly, like the whole of our project. Alex went to several garden centres, and we found the most suitable plant containers at Camden Garden Centre: locally made terracotta pots.
17
Choice of produce “Whatever is going to grow in that pot, it needs to be easy to grow. ”
I consulted Toby Howell, who grows his own fruit and vegetables. Quickly a list of easy-to-grow produce was formed. Sadly fruit doesn’t grow quickly / easily. •
Courgettes
•
Spring Onions
•
Rocket
•
Lettuce
•
Spinach
•
Radishes
Toby told me that the seeding or rooting stage is the most critical. We were thinking of “pregrowing” the produce, before giving our pots away. It would be a shame if the plants died after we had given them to our target audience.
18
Branding “Your ideas are all up in the air, I need to see them on the table! ”
Throughout the project we had been more focused on the produce and strategy. We had hardly thought about the branding. As a result many of our ideas were still conceptual, and Paul told us to hurry up and create some branding visuals. Thanks to Theo’s research we decided to use an equilateral triangle, with a corner in a bottom centred position. This is the Ancient Greek symbol for water. For a long time we weren’t able to think of a suitable name for our project, in the end we opted for Aqua Project. A simple name, but better than being nameless.
19
Message “Positivity is always the best way to reach people. ”
From an early start we felt a positive / happy message and tone would be more effective than an angry tone. This was reiterated to us by Rosa Foster of the Environmental Agency. With the pots we’d have small booklets. These were some of the phrases we’d use: •
We believe small actions lead to big changes.
•
Did you know that most of your water footprint is not from your household consumption but from the food, energy and products you use every day?
•
•
20
Mass-production of fruit and vegetables uses chemicals and pesticides that contaminate our scarce fresh water. Help us in our mission.
•
In (x) weeks something will appear in your mystery pot. Take care of it and watch it grow.
•
By growing your own food you will be reducing significantly your water footprint.
•
If you do not have the possibility of growing your own food, buy locally and organic. Buy responsibly, be an informed consumer.
Website “Our pots are vehicles of information, but we must get users to reach our website. ”
The website was a very important aspect of our campaign. It needed to do the following tasks: •
Tell what plant you have
•
Keep you updated about your plant’s progress
•
Explain how water is made dirty by mass produced food.
•
Enable users to find suppliers of organic fruit and vegetables
I used Balsamiq Mockups, as advised by Scott Klemmer of Stanford University, I mocked up the website’s functionality. This working mock-up is viewable online.
21
Outcome “Those pots in tote bags are so cute! �
22
Pitch “We’ll probably be cut off if we pass the five minute timeframe.”
The pitch’s time-frame was five minutes. We had narrowed our pitch down to stick to five minutes. When we were listening to other people’s pitches, they all were substantially longer than five minutes! Had we known this we could have created a more complete pitch.
I must admit we ourselves did pass the time limit by a minute, but our pitch definitely wasn’t as lengthy as others’. Save Our Soles got extremely good feedback, but their pitch was a staggering 14 minutes! There seemed to be a disconnect between what was asked, and what was appreciated.
23
Feedback “Your campaign is too polite. �
As a team we were very pleased with our pitch. We got positive reactions students, and MariePier Tremblay said I am a good speaker, which is always nice to hear. But when we received the feedback sheets from Paul Bailey and Sarah Temple this all changed. We were an amber project, and even tutors had mentioned that the colours had no relation to a grade, we felt it would be best if we were green. One of the biggest issues was that our outcome could not be engaging at Green Week. The whole campaign was built to get people to our website, and that happens at home, not at Green Week. During the whole development of our project we did not feel this was an issue. Our target audience was youngprofessionals, students, nor tutors belong to that. 24
Due to our choice of target audience, our project would inevitably be unengaging at Green Week. In our development sessions with Paul Bailey this was not highlighted as an issue, yet this was a huge issue. Also some of the feedback we received was so starkly contrasting with our research and opinions. Especially the advice to be a more “angry” campaign. This contradicted with our view on the campaign’s tone, as well as with Rosa Foster’s advice from the Environmental Agency.
25
Ideas, again “From the top of my head I’ll give you five ideas which are engaging at Green Week. ”
After we received our feedback we felt we had misinterpreted the brief. The majority of the team wanted to make a radical change. In the end we had three main ideas: 1. An extremely lengthy receipt attached to a product. The receipt mentions all the pesticides which have been used. 2. A shopping aisle, juxtaposing the pesticides with the produce. 3. A cocktail bar. When ordering for example orange juice, all the pesticides get poured in to your cocktail before serving. In the end we opted for our second idea, we pitched this to Sarah Temple, and two days later we became a green project!
26
Produce “Which products use the most pesticides? ”
For our initial idea, the “growability” of our produce was the main factor. Now that the growing of produce was out the window, we needed a new criteria. We decided to use produce which uses the most pesticides during their production. Using this criteria we chose apples, peppers, and celery. Using the Pesticide Action Network we were able to find the top pesticides used for each of these products. We put this information on the bottle labels.
27
Bottle Labels “They have to look like normal water bottles, but need chemical signage and branding. ”
The initial design for the bottle labels were created by Theo. We had changed the name of our project to H2O&. Adapting Theo’s design, I was able to add the necessary chemical information. Having (the equivalent of) an A-level in Chemistry I was able to deduce the chemical codes for each pesticide. Instead of using a lot of yellow ink, we used eco-neutral yellow paper to print our bottle labels on.
28
Posters “We want the posters to look normal, but only when reading does one realise that something is wrong. ”
Supermarkets often have many posters on display. To properly create this supermarket-aisle experience we also needed to create supermarket posters. A quick survey revealed that most students buy from Tesco, and thus we decided to create Tesco-like posters. We had the great opportunity to get A1 posters printed for free by a friend of Theo’s. This would only be possible on one specific day, so we made these posters within an hour. This was a very stressful experience! Although Sarah Temple had approved our idea, she did want us to drastically change our posters. We could not reprint our posters, so we said the posters had been redesigned. Sarah loved it, but she never knew they were identical to the first posters she saw.
29
Outcome “Oh, you are the guys with the pesticides, right? It looks nice! ”
30
31
Reflection
Project 2 was an extremely demanding project, for the whole of the team, and for me as an individual.
•
Do we want to create design which we’re proud of, or design which will give us a good grade?
Up until our pitch morale was high, but after receiving the feedback it had dropped significantly. I still wanted to deliver good work, and felt as if it had become my responsibility to keep everyone working. Often I asked each team member to do tasks, and felt as I had started to micro-manage. Luckily communication was clear within our team, and team members said they did not mind the way I was managing the team and this project.
•
Does good design need a thorough explanation / research (like this PDF)? If the car gets invented with thorough research, or without, the car is equally useful.
•
Should we view the tutors who grade our work as clients we want / need to please?
•
How can one use disappointing feedback to up morale?
Also many tough decisions and dilemmas had emerged during this project some of them were:
32
The end,