Apprentice Challenge Brief Background: This is the first year of Leeds Mencap Apprentice challenge, in which teams are given ÂŁ50 and need to convert this amount into as much money as possible for the charity. We were asked to work with Duke Studios and North Bar as a team to design, produce and sell a one-off run of collectable coasters to reach an aim of raising ÂŁ1300 for the charity. Brief: Design a set of 4 collectable beer mats to be sold across the North Bar chain of pubs in Leeds. These will be laser cut by Duke Studios onto kraft board and distributed in a volume of 2700. The design needs to be simple as it will be produced in high volume and should be quick to laser cut, minimising the detail as much as possible. The design should not reference beer as may be sold outside of the bar environment. A consistent theme should run across the set to encourage people to buy all 4. Audience: North Bar attracts a lot of craft beer drinkers as it stocks a huge number of microbreweries and independently brewed drinks. Drinks tend to be higher priced than other venues and so visitors are likely to have disposable income to spend on the beer mats. Tone: Eye Catching Collectable Simple
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Concept / development After discussing some ideas, we decided to move forward with the idea of using half characters whose top and bottom halves would line up when all 4 mats were collected. We particularly liked the idea that people could mix different characters to create unintended combinations, and that this could encourage conversation and fun in the bar environment. We calculated that 8 characters, split into 16 halves, would be needed to achieve this effect. Andy developed an illustration style that would be really stripped back to reduce the time spent on the laser cutter. Using the same proportions, I created old man and hipster characters to join the set and began to make adjustments to the shoes of similar characters to create more variation within the set. While Andy completed the full set of characters, I started to place them into the layout. We had to draw a diagram to make sure that all of the heads and legs were separated onto different mats and that everything would connect as we wanted it to. The early format went through a few revisions before everything matched up correctly.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Feedback: After sending over our initial designs a test cut was made we recieved the following feedback: - Concern over the way we had portrayed some of the characters, and we were asked to alter some of them to avoid causing any possible offence due to the mats being in support of a mental health charity. - In the initial cut the laser cutter caused the letters to ‘blow out’ so a thinner, single line typeface needed to be used instead. - The beer mats did not intereact with each other as well as hoped. A solution needed to be found to make the characters match up more directly and make this interaction more obvious. In response to the feedback, I had to find a ‘single line’ font and discovered Futura Line which worked perfectly. I also changed the format slightly by cutting a notch in two sides of the beer mat to make the charcters link up directly, encouraging prople to connect them. To make this more obvious, I removed the inner ring and have the charcters sit right on the edges.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Poster To help sell the beer mats which had been sent out in the last week, we were asked to design a poster that could be laser cut out of the same kraftboard and given to the bars. We wanted to use this space to show off all of the characters in full. Again, we had to make the poster really simple for the laser cutter and so used the single line font and outlines from the characters. A description was provided and the price and hash tag also had to be shown on the poster. I worked on creating a suitable layout for the poster and put together the copy to include only the necessary information. Andy created a diagram for the bottom section of the poster to show a linear arrangement of the mats as this was one idea as to how to display them along the bar. The client was happy with the result and this was the final poster that was sent off to be cut.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Final Product These are the final beer mats that were cut out of kraft board and took over a week to cut out the 2000 beer mats that were initially cut. These were sold across the six North Bar pubs in and around Leeds for a month. In total approximately 1,500 beer mats were sold raising ÂŁ785.77 for Leeds Mencap. We were also really pleased to win an award for the most innivotaive fundraising idea at the Leeds Mencap award ceremony. Throughout the month we recieved alot of positive comments across social media sites and press releases from staff and customers. It was really rewarding to see images of people interacting with the format of the beer mat and even making their own characters on the back.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603
Final Product We tried to make the 3 banners slightly different by making the left banner concentrate on a campfire, and the right hand side banner concentrate on a waterfall scene. The posters were dispalyed in time for World book night - 2 outside and 1 inside the shop. Although the brief wasn’t what we expected, we were happy with our design and enjoyed working in a different format and scale. The brief also allowed us to have our work associated with Waterstones and allowed us to add another window display to our bread and butter portfolio.
Martin O’Dea (collab with Andy Foster)
Apprentice Challenge
OUGD603