SHAKE & STIR PROCESS BOOK Leah Strickman
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Process Book
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1 CRISIS #1: PRE-SEMESTER
My initial proposal was to do a website of some sort about fear, which was kind of a nebulous and unspecific project. I don’t deal well with projects that are not specific and clearly defined, so this kind of went out the window as soon as I sat down and tried to figure out what I was actually going to do. Once I threw away the fear idea, I was once again stuck trying to look at every type of thing that I liked and trying to figure out what to do. Cue conversations with my mom and my brother friends I hadn’t talked to in months, a lot of worrying, and a lot of lists, and eventually I ended up on the idea of doing a website with basic information about cocktails. After an email chain with a designer I worked with last summer, who suggested I do something similar to birch box but for cocktails, I decided to slightly change my project, to be a product like birch box but for cocktails. (I’ve always thought that executing a good idea is just as good as coming up with it yourself)
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Process Book
I’ve always thought that executing a good idea is just as good as coming up with it yourself
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Proposal and initial mood boards.
2 BEFORE WE KNEW WHAT WAS AHEAD
Cue making my proposal and doing a shit ton of visual research and mood boards, a lot of which really wasn’t specific enough to be useful. However, I also looked at a lot of products that were similar to see how they were branded (birch box, plated, other services that literally did the same thing). At this point, I was faced with how to solve the problem that my great fun idea already existed, and there were people doing it pretty damn well. My idea at this point was that my service wasn’t different, it was better. It was more well designed, fancier, more up scale. Once I had decided this, I was faced with the problem of how to design the best cocktail subscription possible. My brand wasn’t all that specific, but I did a lot more visual research, looking at many different possibilities for my brand.
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I looked at flexible branding systems, and idea that could work well for a monthly service such as mine, because it would allow each month’s box to shine for itself. At this point, I realized that for a flexible brand to work for me, I would need to pick out some sort of defining feature for each month’s box, like a theme. I quickly brainstormed and made some mood boards for Casablanca, a theme I thought would be fun and would appeal to my audience, who theoretically was young but sophisticated enough to enjoy a good old movie.
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Images from initial brand “mood book” of flexible branding.
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While I was making a lot of mood boards, I also started to develop my logo. I had tentatively chosen the name The Cocktail Box, which turned out to be ugly in most forms. I was mostly looking at fat face serifs, because of their elegant but graphic forms, but also looked into some more handwritten or script-y looking marks. I ultimately decided that this name wasn’t working for me. I started name generation once again, and settled on Shake & Stir, which I frankly liked mostly because I thought that I could make some cool shapes with the ampersand and double S’s. It also invoked more of an image of making a drink, which is what you’d be doing with this subscription, and is the whole point of buying it. The typeface I was using is called Lust. I made some mockups of packaging and bought a wood box online. I also made some mockups of bottles and started buying bottles for what would later be my packaging. Right: Initial logo development, including a laser cut scoring sample for the outer box.
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Gin This jar contains sugar, which can be used to make simple syrup, a key ingredient in the French 75. Packaged simple syrup is available in stores, but it’s just so much better when you make it yourself.
Images from my first draft presentation, including first drafts out labels for bottles
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Left: Two intitial directions of icons and patterns for the bottle packaging. Right: Initial mockup of a bottle design
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As I was going through logo iterations, I was also making some icons to determine what feel I wanted the brand to have. One direction was a watercolor pattern with a very handmade feel. The other was vector icons, which felt more graphic and clean (but a little less fun).
I wasn’t entirely sure what differentiated Shake & Stir from the competition aside from some kind of random themes for each box. Designing the product was hard because it didn’t have a whole lot of direction.
I also came up with designs for outer packaging for the individual bottles using the logo and typeface. These labels used the idea of multiple pieces coming together to make a whole, which was the concept behind a lot of my designs at this point. I used a gradient, which I felt was fitting with the feeling of the bold type and word mark. I was also using dazzle type, where you eliminate the thin parts of letters, to further signify many separate elements coming together. As you can tell, at this point I was kind of unsure about a lot of elements of the brand. I didn’t know if it should feel handmade or bold and graphic, and I wasn’t entirely sure what differentiated it from the competition aside from some kind of random themes for each box. Designing the product was hard because it didn’t have a whole lot of direction.
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3 CRISIS #2: THE (GASP!) REBRAND
At the AIGA Student Conference, I talked to Katy Fischer, a creative director from TOKY. I showed her what I was working on for my thesis, and she basically said it didn’t look like it had much direction. Unfortunately, I realized that she was right. My designs were kind of based off of nothing. The s/& mark looked nice, but my brand was based off of the generic idea that it was nicely designed. We talked and she helped me determine that the concept behind my brand and the thing driving it was the making of the drinks. The kit was able to serve as a tool to educate people about how to make their monthly drink, and to help them understand more about the ingredients inside. This is what I wanted them to take from the whole experience, and what I now had to reflect in my branding. So, from there it was basically back to the drawing board. I had about a month and a half left, so this was my cue to jump into work mode. I started by making a mood board that felt more fitting with the vibe I wanted to convey. This meant images that were a little bit lighter, airier, and more handmade feeling than what I had before.
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The concept behind my brand and the thing driving it was the making of the drinks. That was the reason to get the service in the first place, and the part that would appeal to my audience.
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I had some images in my mind of light colored, traced text that looked a lot like this. I did some typeface experimentation and a lot of tracing and ended up with this mark.
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From there, it was just a matter of picking colors and secondary type, and starting to look at designs for labels and what other elements would be included. So, my branding was going a little better and was more on track, even though it was a complete turnaround from what I’d had before.Â
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4 CRISIS #3: THE “WHAT DO I MAKE” CRISIS
At this point, I still hadn’t really decided what my final deliverable would be. At the beginning of the project I’d assumed that it would be packaging, but as I continued I felt like I wanted to make a website or at least some kind of print material as a supplement. It was getting later and later in the game and I was stuck trying to decide which deliverable to make, rather than working on making the thing. I made a lot of lists and spent a night sitting in studio feeling stressed but not doing anything, and finally decided to just go for it and make the packaging. I was holding onto the idea that I could also make a website at this point, but the packaging was becoming enough of a task by itself that I decided not to.
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5 THE FINAL MONTH
The “oh shit i actually have to make this thing” phase. So, once I decided to do packaging, I had to make another “mood board”, but really just find a bunch of pictures of clever and interesting packaging to take inspiration from. I’d decided to use a cardboard box instead of wood, so at that point I (finally) began doing some samples and cutting out some die lines to see what they looked like. I made a whole bunch of different styles of icons to possibly use on the outer packaging, including some watercolor images of the ingredients that I’m very sad didn’t make it into the final product. Upon returning from spring break, the real panic set in because this thing was due in less than a month, and I basically had a logo and a few box templates and some bottles.
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I made some final changes to my branding (the colors and the style of the icons, both of which felt a little out of place with what I knew I wanted the brand to convey). I switched to brighter colors that I felt would be a little more unisex and didn’t have the baby shower feeling of my first colors. The drawings got thinner and simpler to be in line with the way the logo tracing looked. This also gave me more options to manipulate them and create patterns.
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Once these things had been determined, I could finally make some better designs for individual bottles. I was still using the traced type for these for a while, but after a meeting with Heather Corcoran where she suggested that a bold typeface could contrast with the colors and icons nicely, I switched to Franklin gothic and finished these designs for good. (Note how many bad options came before the ones I ended up using) The other element that needed to be designed at this point was my booklet. After building on some initially experiments with ways of showing lists and various other elements, I basically flowed in my text and incorporated some of my illustrations and felt like it was in pretty good shape. This also meant binding two books, which I decided to do simply (in line with the brand), just by sewing the back of the books together. The other problem with the booklet was how to fit it into the box. There was space for all of the other elements of the box in my insert, but fitting in the booklet was a pain because it was flat and could really just be thrown on, but I also felt that there was an opportunity to do something cool with it. After a lot of experimentation with different types of inserts and boxes, I decided to just put it in a simple box that was printed like the outside and would be placed on top of the other elements, kind of leading the subscriber into the experience of the whole box.
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Left: I call this the “bleeding mascara� version of the box. This happened when I tried to do an image transfer with citrisolv.
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As this was happening, I started making a lot of boxes. Like, so many boxes. Like, my hands will probably be tired for the next month amount of boxes. I basically started with a template and made tiny adjustments until it was perfect. Unfortunately, you can’t laser cut corrugated cardboard (it catches on fire), so I had to cut these out by hand. I was also developing patterns for the inner inserts as I did this. I decided to use a thinner cardboard (so that I could laser cut it), and went through the same process of just doing it a lot of times and making tiny adjustments until it was perfect as I had with the outer box. In the middle of this process, I stumbled upon this amazing guy named who calls himself a “cardboard engineer” who had some laser cut autocad files on his instagram. To be honest, those gave me a pretty good idea of how to best cut out my inserts, and that helped me a lot moving forward.
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Me with my pile of boxes. I’d actually already thrown out two old ones when this photo was taken.
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Meanwhile, I realized that the outer box was going to need to have something on it, and if I wasn’t going to put paper on it, that meant figuring out a way to print directly on the cardboard. Thanks to the help of Chrissy (my advisor), who lent me her screen and photo emulsion, and my friend Emily who is a printmaking major/angel to make my screen and show me how to do the printing itself, I also started the process of figuring out how the hell to screen print perfectly on my boxes when I’d never printed anything in my life before. This also took a lot of trial and error. The last couple weeks were really just a frenzy of finishing everything and putting it all together. After a lot of hand cramps, hours at the laser cutter, and money spent on cardboard, everything was done! My screen, and my not so perfect first attempts at printing my boxes.
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Shots of the final product!
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6 THINGS I LEARNED: 1
You can glue labels onto bottles with milk 2
Sometimes it’s smart to start over 3
Cardboard can be surprisingly expensive, and book board is the enemy in all possible ways.
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If you just assume that you will screen print perfectly the first time you do it, you are wrong and will mess up the box that you just carefully cut out
start coding, start printing. Don’t be lazy or anxious. If you spend half the time you spend thinking and worrying actually getting started, you’ll do great.
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Don’t be scared to get started. Stop spending so much time thinking about what you’re going to do and just do it - start building,
Prototypes are not nearly as helpful as you think they are, because the problems you’ll run into aren’t things you’ll predict. 33
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7 SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Chrissi Cowhey for help and general advising. Emily Mogavero for showing me how to screen print a week before her thesis was due. Katy Fischer for telling me my work sucked and could be better. Randall Zaitz for the idea. Sarah Mitrano for life advice and help with constructing and figuring out all manner of cardboard contraptions. Everyone in my capstone class for critique and advice.
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