Senior Capstone Process Book ART 448 Emily Brinkman
Capstone Proposal For my senior project, I wanted to do something that I knew was within my capabilities and a topic that I already know something about. I also wanted the project to be something that would be beneficial to an audience. My grandparents eat a lot of gluten-free foods and desserts, so I have noticed that there were not very many gluten-free options on dessert menus. So, I want my project to be a gluten-free dessert shop. This dessert shop will have exclusively gluten-free dessert treats such as cookies, cupcakes, and ice cream. The shop will also have allergy friendly options such as peanut-free options. I intend to focus on the branding, illustration, advertising, and packaging fields for this project. I intend to make posters, banners, advertisements with possibly a website, a menu, and packaging for specific items for the project. I believe that by focusing on these fields, I will be successful in creating a visual communication of what the brand is and what they do. I also believe this project will stand out in the design field because the idea is unique and therefore the branding and packaging will be unique. Also, because of the challenge of the uniqueness of the brand and packaging, I believe that this project could help me grow as a designer. In order for this project to be successful, I intend to research gluten-free and allergy friendly desserts. Through this research, I believe I will understand how to brand the company and be able to create a menu for the company. I will also possibly understand how I could create the packaging. I also intend to research different ways to package different desserts. I want to do this research to understand how labels work for gluten-free foods and how to package desserts like cupcakes and ice cream. I intend to research accredited gluten-free chefs with recipes and read gluten-free and allergy friendly studies to help me know what foods could be served in the
shop. I also want to research dessert shop branding and packaging to gain inspiration for my branding. I will do my research through scholarly searches online, through print, and I would like to interview my grandparents on some desserts they like to eat. The only problem that I forsee is the website and not having enough time to do it, but I am determined to create a website for the project. Some smaller research problems could include how to create a menu that is completely gluten-free. For example, I want there to be many options of gluten-free desserts on the menu but there may not be a lot of gluten-free desserts. So, to solve this problem, I will research ways to use the same recipes but have the dessert turn out differently. For example, cupcakes usually have the same recipes but you can still change how each cupcake can look through frosting, adding different sprinkles, adding a toy ring on top, etc. My timeline will be a weekly timeline. By 1/25, I will have a name for the shop, all of my research resources, thematic guide, points of departure, and some concept sketches. By 2/1, I will have finished concept sketches, a logo, and a logo suite for the first project review meeting. By 2/8, all concepts will be finalized (changes have been made if it’s needed from the project review), and have a start on posters, banners, and packaging. By 2/15, I will have all of the poster and banner designs done, at least two packages laid out and mocked up and a start on the menu, advertisements, and website. By 2/22, the two packages are finalized, at least two more packages laid out and mocked up, and if it’s possible I will have the menu design done (if not, I will have it done by 2/24). By 2/29, all package designs and mock ups will be done, possibly all advertisements will be done, and the website will be at least half way done. By 3/7, advertisements will be done,
possibly the website will be done, and fixing things from critiques for the Second Project Review Meeting. By 3/14, I will be working on anything that needs to be fixed or tweaked for the Final Presentation. By 3/28, I will possibly finish my research paper, and working on fixing things. By 4/4, everything will be finalized for the Final Presentation. 4/6-4/21, prepare for installation and install the exhibit.
Capstone Research Paper Brinkman 1 For the senior capstone project, we were tasked with creating a unique design project that could benefit an audience. One problem that is apparent in today’s restaurants and bakeries is the lack of gluten-free sweets. Bakeries and restaurants do have gluten-free options but there are usually very few options. So, this observation sparked the inspiration to base the project on this problem; an exclusively gluten-free dessert shop. Every product that this company sells will be gluten-free as well as some products will be allergy friendly. Allergies such as peanut allergies are also hard to find in bakeries and restaurants. This will be very helpful for people who only eat gluten-free products, which is the target audience for this project. The best way to start the research for this brand is to look at previous gluten-free packaging and bakery packaging. The colors on these packaging and brands were mostly dull colors with tan, brown, and green usually being the colors. The next step is to research the colors and designs of bakeries and sweet shops. The colors were mostly bright colors with swirly designs. This was the first problem with designing the brand; incorporating the healthy tones of the gluten-free branding and the sweet tones of a dessert shop brand. Taking both of these very different tones into consideration, the name of the dessert shop was decided. The name of the shop for the project was decided to be “Smart Sweets.� The first branding and packaging that fit Smart Sweets was the Kuranda Muesli rebranding by the Boxer & Co design firm. Boxer & Co is an award-winning firm that has a lot of experience in package design. The Kuranda Muesli design in particular is a gluten-free food
Brinkman 2 product and packaging. They took the old dull design of the Kuranda Muesli packaging and turned it into a vibrant and sleek design. Since its redesign, the sales of Kuranda Muesli went up 45%, according to Boxer & Co. Going away from the typical dull appearance to a sleek and lively design while still conveying the healthy part of it will be a smart way to design Smart Sweets. The sales increase is indicative that these kinds of designs for gluten-free products work. According to Robert Jones in “Branding: A Very Short Introduction,” branding is more than just the name of a product or company. Branding started out as a way to sell things but now they should connect to a bigger picture. For example, the Disney company’s bigger idea is “family friendly,” the Volvo company’s bigger idea is “safety,” and the Coca Cola company’s bigger idea is “progress, optimism, and happiness.” These bigger ideas are what helps a company target an audience and makes the brand successful. The name “Smart Sweets” is a first step into creating the bigger idea of the company. Instead of branding the shop with a generic name such as “Gluten-Free Dessert Shop” with the typical dull colors, the brand should connect to a bigger picture of the company. The “Smart” refers to how eating gluten-free options is a smarter and healthier option to regular sweets. Then, the “Sweets” refers to what the dessert shop sells, which is various sweets. The name is designed to tell the audience exactly what the company is and what they are about in an instant. And it also shows the bigger idea of the company that it is “a healthier dessert shop.” Next in the research of the project is the colors for the brand. The colors went through several options before settling on one color scheme. Some of the colors that were considered
Brinkman 3 were green, pink, purple, brown, and tan colors but ultimately was settled on green, pink, and tan. According to a Health Communication article, “Does Green Mean Healthy? Nutrition Label Colors Affects Perceptions of Healthfulness” by Johnathon P. Schuldt, green is often associated with the earth and natural ingredients. Green is also associated with “go” because of traffic lights. This creates a positive feeling as well as a healthy feeling when an audience sees the color green. According to Bourn Creative, a design firm, pink is often associated with sweetness and playfulness. This color will appeal to the “sweet” side of the brand. Both of these colors will appeal to the bigger idea of the company and help with instantly communicating to the audience what the company is all about. With all of this information from research, the logo can be properly created. The logo, like the colors, went through many changes. At first, the logo had a cookie design with “Smart Sweets” inside to show the dessert side of the shop. However, from suggestions from peers and from research, the cookie was scrapped from the design. The design of the logo was ultimately decided to be a typographical design. Many bakery and gluten-free logo designs are purely typographical, much like the design of the Kuranda Muesli logo. In that design, Boxer & Co. utilizes a san serif typeface with some fun elements added to it such as the decorations on the “K” in Kuranda. The final design became the san serif typeface Voster with the script typeface Heritage. The Voster typeface is used for “Smart” and the Heritage typeface is used for “Sweets” to coordinate with the meanings behind the two words.
Brinkman 4 Once the logo was complete, the collaterals could be decided on. The collaterals for the project are posters, an ad campaign, packaging, and a website. The poster and ad campaign were the first to be designed to help establish the tone of the rest of the collaterals. At first, the posters were going to advertise a cookie sale that would tie into the exhibit. The exhibit would feature cookies for sale that were featured on the posters. However, after suggestions from peers, the posters were changed from an advertisement to an ad campaign. Since the posters are now an ad campaign, they can coordinate with social media posts and coordinate with the exhibit. According to the book, “Advertising Campaign Strategy: A Guide to Marketing Communication Plans” by Donlad Parente and Kirsten Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, today’s audiences expect transparency from brands. Audiences expect companies and brands to be approachable and relatable. This is why Smart Sweet’s target audience is people who eat gluten-free who also like sweets. This target audience will be the most beneficial to the company because of the need for more gluten-free sweets in this audience. Therefore, being transparent and relatable to this target audience will also be beneficial for the company. In order to be transparent to a gluten-free audience, the company and the brand needs to communicate that everything is gluten-free. Explaining that everything is gluten-free in social media posts and in other areas such as the website will help the brand be transparent to the audience. Having photos of the products in social media posts will also help the company be relatable. Researching other relatable campaigns strategies will benefit Smart Sweet’s campaign strategy. An example of a great ad campaign is Chick-Fil-A’s Cow Day campaign. One day a year, Chick-Fil-A let’s anyone who wears a cow costume have a free meal that day. Interacting
Brinkman 5 with their audience like this helps them be more relatable with them. So, a good strategy in order for Smart Sweets to be relatable would be to interact with the audience. There will be an option for people to customize their own cupcakes on the Smart Sweets website. However, the campaign will advertise a “create your own cupcake” day. Customers who make their own cupcake on this day will receive 70% off the cupcake that they make. With this kind of campaign, the company is interacting with the target audience and a general audience. This interaction will not only bring in the target audience but it will also bring in people who are not the target audience who might be curious about the dessert shop based on the ad campaign. Using real photos of the products in the campaign will also help the company be relatable while showing off the products. Once the ad campaign was established for those collaterals, the packaging and the rest of the collaterals could start. Before research could begin for package design, the products needed to be decided on. To know what Smart Sweets should sell, researching what gluten-free means and gluten-free recipes was key. According to “The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book,” there are many reasons why people eat gluten-free, but one reason is because of Celiac disease. This disease causes people to not be able to digest gluten. Some recipes and products that are good for gluten-free consumers are cookies, cakes, and cupcakes. There are plenty of recipes for these products that are just like their gluten counterparts such as chocolate chip cookies. Researching bakery packagings and gluten-free packagings was key for the Smart Sweets packaging. Researching how branding works with packaging was also key in the designs. According to the book “Package Design Workbook: The Art and Science of Successful
Brinkman 6 Packaging” by Steven DuPuis and John Silva, manufacturers in the mid-1900’s started to notice that packaging was essential to the brands. For example, Coca Cola’s bottles are essential to it’s brand because the design of the bottle and the label is often associated with the brand. Another example is Campbell’s soup, whose iconic red label is often associated with the brand. Packaging can be so powerful that just the design of it can instantly indicate to audiences what the brand is. According to “Package Design Workbook,” the design of a package “not only delivers the product to the consumer, it brings the consumer to the brand.” This thought is exactly what Smart Sweets needs with its packaging. In today’s packaging designs, designers usually keep in mind how they will stand out on a shelf in a grocery store. However, since bakeries usually do not sell their products in a grocery store, they have the freedom to be a little lazier with their packaging. Smart Sweets may not be selling its products in a grocery store, but the packaging still needs to be able to stand out from the competition. The Smart Sweets package design needs to be able to stand out because the company wants to be able to bring the brand to the consumers. It is important that the package can handle and deliver the products but it is equally important that the package is able to communicate the brand to the consumers. There are four total packages that are essential for Smart Sweets. The first is the cookie packaging, the second is the cake packaging and the last two are the cupcake packagings. Bakeries normally wrap their cookies in a wax paper with a design on it. For Smart Sweets, it will be the same except the wax paper will have a bite mark on top of it to resemble the cookie icon created for the identity suite.
Brinkman 7 Next, the cake box had to be designed. Normally, bakeries usually do not sell their cakes by pieces. A lot of bakeries either sell the whole cake for parties or do not have a package for a single piece of cake. At Smart Sweets, customers will have the option to buy the whole cake or a single slice of cake that comes in a box. To make the cake box unique like the cookie packaging, the single slice cake box will be in the shape of the cake slice. Both of these package designs will feature a pattern of all of the icons to tie in the company branding. The pattern will also tell what the brand is to people who may have never heard of Smart Sweets. Like what “Package Design Workbook” says, this brings the consumer to the brand, which should be one of the most important aspects of a package. The next two packages are the cupcake packages. Bakeries and cupcake shops normally have packaging that is made for four cupcakes. This is good, however, this is normally the only option when it comes to cupcake packaging. Sometimes consumers like to order one or two cupcakes when they visit bakeries or cupcake shops. So, for Smart Sweets, it would be good for the company to have two options for cupcake packaging. The first one will be able to hold four cupcakes and the second one will be able to hold just one cupcake. To make these packages more interesting like the cookie and cake packages, they will have cut-outs of the cupcake icons. The package for one cupcake will have a top that covers the whole front of the box. The consumer will be able to open the package by opening the top to reveal the inside of the package and reveal the whole cupcake. When the consumer picks up the cupcake, a dye cut of the brand’s cupcake icon that was behind the actual cupcake will appear. This will make the package
Brinkman 8 experience more interesting for the consumer as well as bringing the brand to the consumer. The package for four cupcakes will have the same idea as the package for one cupcake. This package will have the pink color be more prominent to distinguish itself from the other packages. A pink version of the dye-cut of the cupcake icon will be in the middle of the box instead of behind the cupcakes. Once again, including the cupcake icon in the package will bring the brand to the consumer. With the package design established, the website can now be designed. According to an article by Gitte Lindgaard, Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dudek, and J. Brown, designers have 50 milliseconds to leave an impression on consumers. In today’s world, since people are used to instant impressions thanks to the internet, they are very quick to judge based on design. This is especially true for websites. Three research studies were conducted in this article to see how quickly consumers form their opinion of a website. The study concluded that the consumers formed an opinion about the websites in about 50 milliseconds. So, the first thing the audience should see is not only a great design but a design that can instantly tell them all about the company. For the website for Smart Sweets, the first thing the consumer should see is the product. In order to be transparent and relatable, like the research of brand campaigns suggested, real photos of the Smart Sweets products should instantly be relatable to the consumer. It also instantly shows off some of the products to the consumer and lets them know what the company is selling. Next, the header should have a slogan that is short enough yet instantly tells the
Brinkman 9 consumer everything about the company. The perfect slogan for Smart Sweets is “good sweets, good life.” This instantly tells the consumer that these products are good sweets as well as telling them that they are healthier than normal dessert. To keep the theme of being relatable to the consumers, there will be pictures throughout the website. Pictures are more relatable to audiences than illustrations and they also show off the products to the consumer. In the menu window, there will be three sections, one for each type of product that Smart Sweets sells. Each section will also feature three items that include pictures with these items. The cookie section will feature chocolate chips, black and white, and sugar cookies. The cake section will feature red velvet, chocolate, and orange bundt cake. Finally, the cupcake section will feature chocolate, vanilla, and customizable cupcakes. To keep Smart Sweets relatable to the consumers, there will be an option to customize their own cupcakes on the website. Consumers have the option to create their own cupcakes at the store, but this feature is for those that want to do it digitally. The consumer will fill out a questionnaire to figure out what kind of cupcake they would like and then it would be available for pick-up or delivery from the store. The consumer can also pick what kind of cupcake topper they would like. They can have the topper just say “Smart Sweets” or they can have their own phrase written on the topper. Allowing the customer to customize their cupcake and what their topper will say will help the brand be relatable to the customer. According to the book, “The Strategic Web Designer: How to Confidently Navigate the Web Design Process” by Christopher Butler, web projects are successful if creativity and
Brinkman 10 practicality are working together. In the case of web design, practicality has to be prioritized over creativity. A website can look creatively great, but if a user cannot navigate the website then it runs the risk of losing the user. The Smart Sweets website will have creative design elements such as the colors from the brand identity and pictures of the products strategically placed. These design elements will keep the consumers on the site while still being easy to navigate. In conclusion, one of the most important elements of a brand is how relatable and transparent they are. One of the best ways to be relatable to audiences is to use real pictures and use a campaign strategy that will bring people to the store. By using the “Cupcake Day� strategy, the company not only brings in customers but they will also be relatable to those customers. They are also being relatable by letting the customers customize their own cupcakes and the cupcake toppers in the store or on the Smart Sweets website. Posting the campaign on social media and printing posters are some of the best ways to reach audiences with the campaign. The website for Smart Sweets will also utilize the relatable strategy with real pictures and a creative but practical design. Packaging is an essential part of any brand. Brands can be recognizable just from the way their boxes or bottles are shaped. To make Smart Sweet’s packaging stand out, a pattern from the icons was created and placed on the boxes. Dye-cuts of the cupcake icons were made for the cupcake boxes and bite marks were made in the cookie packages to coordinate the cookie icon. These unique elements will help the Smart Sweets packagings stand out. That is perhaps the biggest goal of designing a brand; making the brand stand out among other brands.
Brinkman 11 Works Cited “20 Gluten-Free Cookies You'll Want to Inhale.” Texanerin Baking, 24 Mar. 2020, www.texanerin.com/20-gluten-free-cookies/.
BournCreative, Jennifer, and Digital Strategist · WordPress. “Meaning of The Color Pink |.” Bourn Creative, 4 June 2016, www.bourncreative.com/meaning-of-the-color-pink/.
Butler, Christopher. The Strategic Web Designer How to Confidently Navigate the Web Design Process. HOW Books, 2012.
DuPuis, Steven, and John Silva. Package Design Workbook: the Art and Science of Successful Packaging. Rockport Publishers, 2011.
Jones, Robert. Branding: a Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017. “Kuranda Muesli - Brand & Packaging Redesign - Boxer & Co.” BOXER & CO, 2017, www.boxerandco.com.au/portfolio/kuranda/.
Lindgaard, Gitte, et al. “Attention Web Designers: You Have 50 Milliseconds to Make a Good First Impression!” Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 25, no. 2, 2006, pp. 115–126., doi:10.1080/01449290500330448.
Parente, Donald, and Kirsten L. Strausbaugh-Hutchinson. Advertising Campaign Strategy: a Guide to Marketing Communication Plans. Cengage Learning, 2015.
Ryberg, Roben. The Ultimate Gluten-Free Cookie Book: 125 Favorite Recipes. Da Capo Press, 2010.
Schuldt, Jonathon P. “Does Green Mean Healthy? Nutrition Label Color Affects Perceptions of Healthfulness.” Health Communication, vol. 28, no. 8, 2013, pp. 814–821., doi:10.1080/10410236.2012.725270.
The Process
Images that help get a visualization of my brand.
Images that help get a visualization of my brand.
Typical colors used in gluten free packaging.
Color explorations.
Images that have elements that I want for the logo.
Illustration works that I want for the brand.
Early sketches of the logo.
Early sketches of the logo.
In the first drafts of the logo, I tried to put the words in a shape that looks like a cookie that has a bite taken out of it.
In the third drafts, I explored a different orientation of the logo.
For the fourth draft, I got rid of the cookie altogether and focused on the typography of the logo.
The fifth draft is getting close to what I am going for, but the “Sweets� looks a bit awkward.
The sixth draft is getting closer but the “Sweets� is still a little awkward.
Now the logo looks finished using the typefaces Heritage and Voster. The two typefaces are perfect for what I am trying to convey with the brand. The icons are now just outlines to emphasize the light and healthy part of the brand.
Images that have elements that I want for the packaging.
Cupcake package for one cupcake.
Cupcake package for four cupcakes.
An idea for the Smart Sweets campaign.
Cake box for a piece of cake.
Images that have elements that I want for the website.
Final homepage.
Final menu layout.
Final catering page.
Final custom orders page.
The first drafts of the posters were going to tie into the exhibit by promoting 20% off of the cookies.
In the third drafts, I started to explore designs with real cupcakes instead of illustrations.