Project 2 Individual Report
Madelene King FdA Design for Graphic Communication Year 2 KIN10307102
Co l l a b o r a t i v e Group Members: Sofie Greenwood Karoline Anderson Sarah Gray Eldon Pickles
contents 2 - Brief 3 - Introduction 5- Topic 7 - Initial Research 9 - Food Waste 11 - Expert Talks 13 - Research: Existing Projects 14 - First Hand Account 15 - Ideas - Review 17 - The Beauty Complex 19 - Individuality 20 - Similarity 21 - Ideas Generation 23 - Message 24 - Aims 25 - Projections 26 - Finalised Idea 27 - Building the Identity 29 - Pitch Presentation 31 - Feedback 32 - Video Inspiration 33 - Storyboard 34 - Making the Film 35 - My Final Videos 36 - Green Week Space 37 - Mood Board 38 - Lonely hearts 39 - Risograph: Lonely Hearts 40 - Final Touches 41 - Green Week 42 - Private View 43 - To Conclude
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brief Yo u a r e a s k e d t o f o r m a n d work within a group of 5 students you believe will be productive, efficient and professional in presenting a p r o j e c t d u r i n g G r e e n We e k a t t h e L o n d o n Co l l e g e o f Co m m u n i c a t i o n . T h i s i s a public event, whereby you and your team members will showcase your exploration of a given theme that will engage, provoke, challenge and excite your expected guests in a m e a n i n g f u l w a y.
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INTRODUCTION Te a m E c o - L a b
Group Manifesto
Our group chose to team together after seeing each other’s audition tapes and deciding that it would be suitable to work together. We each had strengths and talents including software knowledge and illustration, that we were able to bring to the team and we had many of the design areas covered by having varying interests in branding, web design and moving image.
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We, eco-lab agree to: Be nice. Work. Ask for help. Be open to compromises and try not to be precious about our ideas. Communicate well. Allow for mistakes. Learn and have fun. Do our best to produce a project that will challenge and excite our audience in a meaningful way.
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Group Blog http://eco-lab.tumblr.com/
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Topic What a waste Team Eco-Lab picked the word ‘Waste’ out of the hat. This, we thought, was a rather good topic to have, as it encompassed almost all the other words, so the possibilities of an outcome were endless. For the first week we each took individual subjects that interested us, and investigated them further, then shared our findings with the rest of the group on the blog. As there was so much varied research we thought we were getting off to a good start and had many potential pathways we could go down.
Initial ideas, words and thoughts that we got down on paper.
I personally chose to research the cultural differences that occur when different countries tackle their waste problems. I was surprised to see how varied the responses were to such issues as recycling and waste disposal. Many countries such as Switzerland and Denmark made use of money incentives to keep their streets clean. It made me wonder why other countries such as ourselves, the UK, struggle so much with controlling the masses of waste we produce. Could we learn from them somehow?
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Initial Research G r e e n We e k Knowing that we were expected to present during the Green Week at LCC I began to look into work that artists had done in regards to waste. I thought that to attract the attention of the students here we needed something very visual and engaging for them to interact with. I came across numerous installations that had used waste materials and went back to look at the “Arte Povera’ movement, something I have studied previously to this course.
Jean Shin Her use of cast-off objects to create conceptual sculptures is visually alluring
We b s e r & N o b l e Trash Pieces These sculptures are very simple yet effective and manage to link waste to the human race
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food waste A recurring topic that came up during our research stages was that of food waste. During the week there were numerous headlines going round that brought the issues of food waste to people’s attention , with many using the shock factor by giving statistics about how much food is wasted per year. We immediately saw this as an opportunity to build upon the hype that media had already created around the topic. In particular we had an interest in the wasted food that does not reach supermarkets due to aesthetic reasons. The numbers and figures were something we felt had been kept in the dark for too long, and consequently not many people knew a lot about it. We saw this as an opportunity to create a new and exciting awareness campaign about a topic that had so far been kept rather secret.
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Major supermarkets, in meeting consumer expectations, will often reject entire crops of perfectly edible fruit and vegetables at the farm because they do not meet exacting marketing standards for their physical characteristics, such as size and appearance. For example, up to 30% of the UK’s vegetable crop is never harvested as a result of such practices. Globally, retailers generate 1.6 million tonnes of food waste annually in this way.
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Expert Talks With our group discussions in mind I attended my allocated talks during the week of guest speakers and heard about many of the pressing issues facing our environment today. The wastage of water was something of which I had no previous knowledge and Dr Robert Bloomfield OBE really opened my eyes to the importance of biodiversity. One talk in particular, on the Consumption day, really brought home the food waste issue and proved it to be an even bigger problem than we first anticipated. I was able to take back a lot of valuable information for the team to work with and think about.
Uncovering the global waste scandal Niki Charalampopoulou Fe e d i n g o f t h e 5 0 0 0 c a m p a i g n A sandwich company that supplies M&S waste 14,000 of the 1st and 2nd slices of bread everyday. Now they sell them to a pig farmer and save £100,000 a year Also wasted included potatoes with eyes, spinach with grass, parsnips too big for standards, odd shaped bananas and oranges
Could these be used for the juice industry instead? The sheer amount of excess oranges is still surplus to the juicing requirement
In Japan the farmers are using waste food from supermarkets to feed their pigs then selling the meat back to the supermarkets as ecopork
People have lost touch with how to look after food, putting lettuce in a glass of water instead of the fridge makes it last up to 2 weeks longer
Involved in GLEANING which is where they take the 30-40% of rejected food, harvest it then give it to charities to help feed the impoverished people
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More supermarkets need to donate surplus food to distribution centres. Only 4% of surplus is currently donated The cosmetic standards of food need to be lowered How do we market ‘ugly’ food? Consumer pressures are what they are trying to push
Big supermarkets have so much bargaining power. Farmer can’t predict how much of the produce is going to meet requirements so make way more than needed so the supermarkets can choose
Other markets, eg crisps, soups, pies are not big enough to absorb the surplus Why is so much produced in the first place? Because the supermarkets and farmers sign a contract for eg 2 tonnes of produce in 2 months time but may change their mind to 1 tonne but 2 tonnes have already been planted 12
Supermarkets don’t want to seem wasteful and are not required to state their wastage. They focus on telling people how to save waste at home as oppose to tackling their own problems with food preparation
Research:Existing Projects
first HAnd account
Organisations that are helping
B a l h a m Fa r m e r s ’ M a r k e t
Doing our research and being aware of what other campaigns and organisations were already out there allowed us to see where there was a gap in which we could place our project. What hadn’t been done yet? Already, duplicate projects and ideas were starting to appear within the year group and we wanted to avoid going down the same route. Feeding the 5k As I mentioned before they hold huge public events where surplus food is put to use. The People’s Kitchen The People’s Kitchen utilises and spreads awareness of food waste and celebrates the power of community by bringing together a team of volunteers to transform food that is heading for landfill into beautiful cooked meals that are served up on a ‘pay what you want’ basis.
Listen to an interview we had with one of the farmers
I was part of the group that took a trip to Balham Farmers’ Market as we wanted to get a first hand account from the people who produce the fruit and veg that go to waste. We thought that hearing about it from their perspective might give us a more effective idea for an outcome, one that really hits the nail on the head. They were happy to talk to us and were eager to give us an insight into the pressures and restrictions that they face when it comes to distributing their produce. They explained how difficult it can be to work with the supermarkets and the different ways in which they shift their unwanted produce into other businesses. One thing that was made very clear and that needs to be highlighted for the consumers is that fact that the fruit and vegetables may all look different but they ALL TASTE THE SAME. After speaking to the farmers directly I felt like I had made a connection with them and we as a group had, to a certain extent, made them a promise to try and change consumer behaviour.
Food For Good As a charity organisation Food For Good aims to reduce the amount of food waste by donating it to charities and avoiding it going to landfill. We transport daily unsold and perfectly eatable food from local restaurants to local charities.
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Ideas: Review Development So far our ideas had been quite narrow minded, we had gone with a couple of the first ideas we came up with and when it came to developing them we came up against many barriers. For example our plan to have a ‘Waste Cafe’ selling unused produce faced logistical problems, sourcing the produce and gaining permission, plus would anybody actually want to eat it? It was also a very short term option, when our aim was to create more of a future-proof outcome. Another idea was to design an instructional book on how to utilise and prepare food in ways you may not have known were possible, for example by using leftover cereal to create beer.
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My own diagram to show the different pathways we can go down and to show where topics can link and crossover
Something seemed to be missing, it lacked depth and durability. Our plan of action was to in fact take a step back and look at the bigger picture again. This is when we came up with our own design challenge so that we had a clearer goal that we could work toward.
Create an experience for people that raises an awareness for the mass of unnecessary wasted food due to their aesthetic and in turn re-establish the supermarket boundaries of what is wasted food. 15
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the beauty complex Drawing Parallels Having thought so much about the strict aesthetic requirements set by the supermarkets we began to draw parallels within human behaviour in relation to what we consider beautiful. There is a certain type of beauty ideal that many people seem to be aspiring to these days which seems to be infiltrating their other life choices. We have noticed a growing trend of people wanting to look the same as each other and this is certainly being reflected in the produce that they wish to buy as consumers seem to want all their fruit and veg to look perfect and the same in terms of size, shape, and colour and without blemishes. This has become accepted as normal but having researched it for a while at this point we were starting to find it increasingly weird that people want their fruit and veg to look identical. Whilst delving deeper into the human beauty issues I found that the problem humans have is that deep down we know that image and desirability are incredibly superficial yet we still get sucked into the industry’s vaccuous little bubble of trying relentlessly to achieve our desired look, that in turn feeds our insecurities. Yet there has been a backlash and people have noticed and recognised that this is not a good thing. These issues within the beauty world have started to be addressed with many campaigns and programmes encouraging people to celebrate their differences and we thought how interesting it would be to try and bring this appreciation for diversity into the fruit and veg world. 17
The Evolution of Beauty This was a video campaign by Dove to try and dispell the idea that everything is perfect and proves that not everything is as it seems within advertising. 18
individuality
similarity
Defining what we mean I felt like I needed to clarify what we were talking about, just for myself, as so many themes and concepts had been processed in my mind in such a small amount of time. This project had been fast paced and I felt engulfed by a whirlwind of ideas. To do this I Iooked at the definitions of the words we were throwing about so that I could gain more of a sense of what it meant to be, for example, an ‘Outcast’.
Being John Malcovich
out·cast
Remembered this being quite a surreal image to look at. Could somehow incorporate the idea into green week to gain attention.
To be rejected or cast out from a home or society A homeless wanderer; vagabond Rejcted matter; refuse Discarded
dif·fer·ent Not alike in character or quality Dissimilar Separate or distinct Not ordinary; unusual
Fr a n c o i s B r u n e l l e
in·di·vid·u·al Existing as a distinct entity Set apart Distinguished
These words are reflective of both the produce at the centre of our project and also relate to the beauty paradigms that we have drawn parallels with.
i·den·ti·cal Similar or alike in every way Resemblance Same shape 19
Doppelgangers These people are all un-related Highlighted how people looking identical is actually bizarre.
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Ideas Generation But better ones this time With our pitch presentation growing closer by the day we really needed to set an idea in stone, which as of yet we hadn’t come close to. The wider boundaries we had set for research had been really beneficial and given us insight into why the waste food issue is such a big problem. By expanding our research base outwards from just waste in its literal form we were able to grasp the inward and hidden nature of consumer behaviour which could only aid us in coming up with a stronger outcome and something our audience would percieve and respond to in a more intuitive manner.
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Armed with this new found understanding of human beauty perception we organised a meeting to lay all our thoughts on the table. To get a sense of the ideas in our respective heads, Karoline, Sofie and I drew and briefly explained them on cards. Taking each idea through different development strategies worked really well as we could spot trends and discuss their positive and sometimes negative aspects. When it came to forming a cohesive final idea we were able to bring in and combine the stongest elements from various concepts to strengthen our eventual outcome. We actually ended up going back to one of our intial ideas to form the basis of our work. But this time had a better chance of being able to make it work and make it relevant.
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message
aims
The Undateables
Things to think about
The inspiration behind our message was loosely based on that of the controversial Channel 4 Series ‘The Undateables’. It followed people living with challenging conditions who are often considered ‘undateable’ and followed their attempts to find love. It made the viewers think twice about their perceptions of disabilities by showing that these people are in fact just like everybody else when it comes to looking for love.
These were some of the particular aspects of our project that I felt needed special attention and that, if achieved, would set ours apart from others that already existed and also those of other groups within Green Week. These were thoughts that were shared and also held by other members of the group. It was good to know that we were all on the same page with what we were trying to accomplish.
Our message is much the same as that of ‘The Undateables’: Although they may appear to be different and less able on the outside, when it comes down to it the insides are the same, and they have been unfairly judged on first impressions.
A different approach I think we needed to come at the waste debate from a different angle. Something other than just bombarding people with facts and trying to shock them with statistics. We all agreed that humour can be a really effective way of engaging people in topics that would otherwise be seen to be more serious.
Cr e a t e s o m e m y s t e r y A way of attracting more attention in the long run was perhaps to be more subtle to begin with. If we did not obviously make the subject of our outcome to do with ‘being green’ straight away then people were less likely to turn off and more likely to dig a little deeper to find out the meaning behind it.
Disclaimer We were NOT calling disabled people vegetables, merely using the same concept that a certain type of person has been pigeonholed because of their appearance. We did not use any of their personal experiences, footage or audio in relation to the vegetables.
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Offer a solution It needed to inform and raise awareness but not leave people feeling depressed and helpless to the cause. It needed to offer a way of giving people the option to help and do their part if they wished to. 24
Projections
finalised idea
Karoline laid out all the findings from the session in this format so that we could relay it clearly to the rest of the team. It sometimes proved problematic if people didn’t turn up to scheduled meetings as we had to keep filling people
in and taking steps backward. Also as a result they seemed less convinced and excited about the project as they had not been a part of the realisation of it and present when decisions had to be made.
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building the identity Logo and website design We didn’t assign someone in the group to design the branding, instead we each came up with what we thought would best suit the campaign. It was good to do it this way as everybody felt like they had their ideas considered and had the opportunity to contribute to the aspect of the project they had a keen interest in. My sketch of a possible hand drawn logo. I liked the idea of something being hand drawn and not so perfect, like the vegetables we were wanting to draw attention to. I didn’t know whether it would be best to just have a text logo or a mixture of image and type. I liked the round one best, it looks like a stamp that we could possibly make.
Colour scheme and basic logo design which had various improvements made as a result of group feedback.
Being part of a team certain roles and tasks were delegated between us. One of mine was to research into possible materials to use for our guerilla campaign, here are mock ups of the potential items we could have used.
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pitch presentation Slides Our pitch went rather well. 1. We began by defining the issue (wasted food due to aesthetics).
2. Then went on to explain our insight (humans project their beuty ideals onto the produce).
4. We then introduced ‘The Uneatables’ - Never Been Picked Our plan to create short, funny videos where fruit and veg act in formats known from popular videos. All the videos to be shared extensively, but lead back to our platform where we link on to different charities involved in the same cause.
5. In addition to this online approach we will launch a physical guerilla style campaign, encouraging people to put ‘missing’ stickers on the green aisles in the supermarkets. However we were unsure about whether this would count as vandalism and if the charities we link to would be comfortable being involved.
3. Next we set out our goal (get the ugly food back onto supermarket shelves) and how we intend to do it (generate debate amongst as many people as possible).
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feedback
Video Inspiration
We g o t a G r e e n
Finding similar portrayals
When we recieved our formative pitch feeedback we were pleased to see that we were given the green status. This meant we didn’t have to go back to the drawing board or make any drastic changes. I think our pitch was a success as we made sure we kept to our time limit by being concise and to the point. We had written down and rehearsed what each of us needed to say and used the slides to illustrate and back up what we were saying as opposed to reading off the projection which could have led to uneccesary waffling. We had recieved positive comments from the class members as well, who agreed that humour
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was a good route to go down and appreciated the extra dimension we’d added with the beauty complexes. All this seemed to boost the group’s morale and it felt like the hard work we had put in during the run up had paid off. This resulted in members of the group who had previously had doubts to become much more on board and excited with the project. Karl had suggested we change the name but after much discussion and second opinions we decided to stick with it, we believed people were clever enough to understand and make the connections. We were in a good place but now had to crack on with creating our videos and the platforms on which we were going to circulate them. We also needed to develop our ideas for our guerilla style sticker campaign.
It was great to get a chance to do something that I could put my own stamp on but also be included in the project. The video was my opportunity to do this so I was really excited to get started and think of ideas. We had a general theme that we were to stick to and that was projecting human qualities and insecurities onto fruit and veg. I was keen to make a plasticine stop-motion animation as I felt this would allow for the most scope in terms of emotions and movements as opposed to filming a real vegetable. Below are a few examples of the types of videos that I watched and in turn influenced my decisions when making my own versions.
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story board
making the film
Sketch Ideas
Tr i a l a n d E r r o r
Having watched the videos many ideas for small scenes and sketches were going round in my mind so storyboarding them helped to form some sort of narrative. I think to incorporate all my ideas into one video would have made it too long as we wanted them to only be a couple of minutes. There were also different attitudes and motions in the scenes so I decided to split them into two videos instead. One was about how the carrot felt insecure and unwanted which reflects how they are currenty being treated. The other one was more about the carrot finding ways to be more desirable and how in the process of trying to do so has actually become less desirable.
As I had never created a stop motion before other than with paper on my scanner I found that I spent most of my time just playing around, taking photos and just seeing what worked and what didn’t. It was really enjoyable and fulfilling to eventually review scenes and find they turned out better that expected.
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My final videos
Green Week Space In a feedback session Karoline and I spoke to Sian and Tara about our plans for Green Week. Though they liked our idea, they weren’t too impressed with the progress we had made since the pitch and warned us that we could get demoted to Amber status which we obviously didn’t want and forced us to have a deeper think about what we could possibly do. We had thought we were being really efficient and helpful by not demanding a massive amount of space within uni and simply requesting a means to show our films. However this was before we knew that there were limited spaces and realised how few groups had been given the go ahead. Because we had been given a Green we
I really tried to use the flexibility of the plasticine to mold it into a character that people could believe in, relate to and ultimately form an emotional attachment to. I don’t think I did too badly and believe the success of the videos was largely due to the attention to detail when it came to creating the gestures and mannerisms of a lonely carrot, even though in some instances it was completely accidental. However they could still be considered quite long, I should perhaps have spent more time editing and refining the content. Overall though I would say I was pleased with my contribution to ‘The Uneatables’ online attack and found the whole process rather amusing.
needed to take advantage of it and not just show our films on a screen which is the only option some other groups had. Tara made quite a good point about the irrelevance of the ‘Missing’ stickers when our theme is closer related to dating. So instead Karoline and I discussed making dating adverts, small and large posters that play with the wording that people use when trying to convey themselves as desirable if they don’t have looks to fall back on e.g ‘larger than life’ etc. We discussd with the group the possibility of having these posters on the walls as well as our videos being shown and maybe having a line of vegetables speed dating people to add a more physical element and to draw attention to our stand.
click on the screenshots to watch the videos
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Mood Board Speed Dating/Lonely Hearts
lonely hearts Final Designs These were the designs for our lonely hearts ads that we put up around the uni for green week and also surrounded our presentation area with. As Karoline drew the logo it made sense for her to illustrate these posters as well, but include suggestions that Sofie and myself put forward. For example, when it came to the text, I suggested that it was hand-written and each have their own handwriting style so that they appear more personal, as if the fruits and veg have actually written them themselves.
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Risograph: Lonely Hearts
Final Touches
Mass Production
Last minute tweaking
We went hunting at uni for scrap paper, and found so much. It meant that we weren’t being hypocritical by raising waste awareness yet creating lots of it at the same time. Because the risograph printer is so cost-effective once we made a master, we printed almost 400 lonely hearts ads. They looked really good and definitely fit more with our theme than missing stickers so I think it was a really valuable developement and tightened our project into more of a whole.
Almost everything was set and good to go for Green Week but some tasks had not been completed as we had planned. The website still needed a lot of editing and additions to be made to it and most importantly it wasn’t even online yet so Sofie took the reins on that aspect whilst I attended to our social networking platforms and made sure that all our videos had been shared and the pages had all the necessary information on them.
Click on the thumbnails to access the respective platforms
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Green Week
private view
Monday
For the Private View we made a few changes as we were in a different position to Monday. We kept a lot of the layout the same just lost the table believing the posters and website spoke for themselves and with so many people it would not be practical. The slightly cobbled together and imperfect look we achieved worked well as it made the area stand out as we had largely digital based work either side of us.
Waste Day was Monday so arriving nice and early gave us time to set up our presentation space. We were in a good position and wanted to make a big eye-catching wall display so that people walking past would pay attention, and it worked. When placing the posters overlapping them slightly allowed for a more rough look as we wanted it to look as if they had been put up by the characters that wrote them and resemble the noticeboards where these types of posters would appear. As the majority of the design elements of our project were hand drawn we thought that our wall should have the same feel which is why we printed our project name onto A4 sheets of paper as opposed to a polished sign or something similar.
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to conclude A useful experience The experience of working in a collaborative group has turned out how I expected it to, to be honest. Workload was not always shared evenly but I think that balance is near impossible to achieve so feel we coped quite well considering none of the members of our group had worked with each other previously. We were successful in creating the outcome that we set out to achieve which resulted in a project that got people interested and talking about the issue of food waste. The quality of the work we put in was reflected by the fact that we were awarded with a slot at Green Week, something in itself I found to be quite underwhelming following all the hype and importance that had been surrounding it. The private view had much more of an atmosphere, as people in attendance were there solely to see the work that had been produced. We recieved really positive feedback from both peers and other guests and found it very satisfying to see the videos we had made get the reaction we were hoping for.
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