Live Project YCN Competition Rachel Irwin
Brief Fruit not sugar We asked some people if they like their soft drinks to have lots of added sugar in them and they said no. No surprises there. Of course, we don’t add any sugar to our drinks - zippo. You might be surprised to hear though, that some of our competitors do add sugar to their ‘healthy’ drinks and lots of it too. The ASA has banned both Vitamin Water and This Water from using misleading ads, which was in part due to the amount of sugar they heap in their drinks. They found that one bottle of This Water could contain up to 42g, that’s 8.5 teaspoons. A bottle of Vitamin Water was found to contain 23g, so just the five teaspoons then. We know you can make great tasting natural juice drinks without adding sugar – we do it everyday. We think that when someone chooses a healthy drink they don’t want or expect it to have heaps of sugar in it. We want you to come up with an idea that tells people the facts, so they can make an informed choice next time they’re at the chiller. Can you communicate this in a fun and Feel Good way?
The Feel Good Drinks Website reflects the brands bright and playful style in its fun and interactive website.
Target Audience 16-34 year old adults, who are happy to pay a little bit more for a healthy, tasty soft drink that isn’t full of junk. They are an up-beat, look-on-the-brightside, sociable bunch, who like to work hard but always find time for some feel good fun and games.
Tone of voice Positive Mental Attitude people - you can’t call yourself Feel Good Drinks and be miserable! The message should always be friendly, fun, and just a little bit cheeky. Please don’t get all serious on us now. It’s about talking to people on their level, making a connection and making them smile.
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Brief Understanding the Client and the Message
Brief Target Audience and Tone of Voice
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Previous Entries
Colourful
As Feel Good Drinks are about being fun and happy the colours used tend to be very bright. Often taking inspiration from the fruit that goes inside the drinks. There are strong uses of green, purple, red, orange and yellow across their designs.
These examples are from previous Feel Good Drinks competition entrance and real Feel Good Drinks adverts. They have been broken down into categories to help understand the brand and its visual style better.
Handmade
Other designs have gone for a handdrawn look or collage affect. This reflects the style of their website, which is made to look like it is made out of paper. It also reflecrs their drinks labels which use hand drawn styles of typography and illustrations.
Characters
The use of characters such as the gnomes, can add a sense of playfulness and fun to the drinks and the brand.
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Research and Analysis Deconstructing Previous Designs
Reseach and Analysis Deconstructing Previous Designs
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Similar Drinks Campaigns There are many other brands in the fruit drinks market and looking at the competitors can help gain understanding of how others are tackling the fruit water market. Consumer focus on health and wellbeing has lead to a surge in brands, which focus on “natural� juice drinks. This then reflects in the design style of the brand, with hand drawn type and illustrations, photos of fruit, outdoors settings and often simple, colourful and bold designs in adverts and in terms of packaging design.
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Analysis Similar Drinks Companies
Analysis Similar Drinks Companies
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Fruit and Typography These examples show how the surface of fruit can be used to draw on, and also examples of how vegetables have been cut out to create a typeface. These methods are a good starting point for experimenting with materials and type in a hands on way. This organic mark-making reflects the design style that Feel Good Drinks is fond of and this could be emphasised in the designs I create.
Food Characters Researching how others have used fruit and vegetables, in a fun and comical way can provide useful inspiration and a new way of looking at the subject. It is often done by drawing on the food or making it into some type of character by giving it eyes and setting up a scenario that can be photographed.
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Research Other Inspiration
Research Other Inspiration
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Ideas Generation
Brainstorming By putting all the thoughts and ideas on paper you can start to see what could be explored. To focus the project any outcomes created will be promoting the Still Juice Drinks in the Feel Good Drinks Range, these come in the following four flavours; Cloudy Lemon, Apple and Blueberry, Cranberry and Orange and Orange and Mango.
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Generating Ideas Brainstorming
Sketches Started sketching layouts, compositions, visual elements and words that could be used. It was realised that there were two main concepts that could be explored. The first was exploring the concept of creating fruit characters by adding eyes to pieces of fruit, and making them interact in a humourous way. The second idea is too create something bold with typography, maybe by carving into the fruit or writing on it.
Generating Ideas Initial Ideas
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Testing Fruit People Started testing out the idea of creating fruit characters, by drawing eyes and blu-tacking them on apples. Speech bubbles were made and attached onto a wire which could push into the fruit, this allowed two characters to interact with each other. These were photographed on a plain background but it felt like it lacked content, and so they were re shot on grass, which gave the image more of a setting and was natural, fitting in with the natural vibe Feel Good Drinks are promoting.
These images alone do not explain the brand and so copy is needed to compliment the visuals.
Copywriting A copy writer is someone who writes the words used to promote an idea or advertising piece and it is often applied to the content that is printed as part of a promotion or advertisement. During the research for this project the importance of copy writing became apparent, as words can be a strong way to create humour and humanity in design. By creating a verbal identity you can communicate a tone of voice and style to the audience, and by using word and visuals together you can effectively create a stronger message. The copy on any outcomes should match and compliment the visuals and project the fun style of Feel Good Drinks. By referring to Feel Good Drinks website, drinks labels and brief you are able to get a sense of their tone of voice. Also by looking at similar companies such as This Water and Innocent Drinks you can better understand friendly copy writing and gain inspiration, as these brands are seen to be at the forefront of this style of branding.
Ideas for other environments to have the fruit creatures in.
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Prototyping Fruit People
“Our cranberries and oranges love catching a bit of sun; its what helps them become naturally sweet to put in our drinks without having to add any artificial nasties or sugar. Why not try it for yourself.� Example of copywriting for the posters, the rest can be found on the final posters.
Prototyping Copywriting
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Fruit Photoshoot To expand the concept as a poster campaign more fruit characters were created, along with using some of the other ideas and jokes from the earlier sketches. These were photographed in different locations, the outdoor settings were more successful as it emphasised the natural and sunny vibe of Feel Good Drinks. Photographing the actual bottles of the drinks proved to be a problem as they were a lot bigger than the fruit and due to the plastic shiny surface didn’t photograph well. So instead scaled down cut out drinks bottles were created and photographed in the scenes.
Over the course of 2 days over 100 photos were taken trying out different lighting, layout and environments, these photos above are a sample of some of the images.
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Prototyping Fruit Creatures Photoshoot
Prototyping Fruit Creatures Photoshoot
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Placing the Copy One reoccurring problem when photographing the scenes was getting the copy to show up on the paper that was in the image. It tended to not stand out enough and so shots were done without the paper in so this could be with photoshopped into the image afterwards. The copy was placed on paper which had a texture and appeared to be torn and rough around the edges, which gives it a more natural and earthy look.
Typography To reflect the hand drawn quality that is found in the brand the typeface HandVetica was chosen. It is a Helvetica typeface that looks as it is has been drawn by hand, without being too messy. A lot of the other hand drawn typefaces found were hard to read and not very neat, whereas HandVetica has a subtle hand drawn look.
Some of the other typefaces looked at, which were not as neat and east to read as HandVetica.
HandVetica AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIi JjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRr SsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
Colour Combinations I want to limit the colours that I use in each poster, so that I have one set of colours for each poster. I have decided to use colours that are bright and bold and match the fruit contained in each of the 4 still juice drinks. Orange and Mango
Cloudy Lemon
Apple and Blueberry
Cranberry and Orange
Trying different ways of adding the copy to the image.
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Final Design Concept Fruit Creatures
Final Design Concept Fruit Creatures
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Fruit Typography The next experiment was cutting up an apple to create typography with the shapes, this was much easier to do and the results looked better. But visually it wasn’t bold and there were doubts that this would be a successful way of using type and had limits, as it would only work for the larger fruit.
Fruit Surface To explore the second idea of fruit typography, the first tester was trying to create marks on an apple and a mango. This was done by attempted to cut into the fruit to create typography, but it was very difficult to do and the results ended up looking very messy. The next tester was drawing on fruit with a pen and again this was difficult and untidy, the pen ink did not want to stay on the surface of the fruit and its difficult to keep the fruit still while drawing on it. 17
Prototyping Fruit Surface
By photographing the type on different backgrounds you can see that whilst its easier to read on the white background the wooden background appears more natural.
Prototyping Fruit Typography
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Illustrative Type Concept The next step was to turn this idea in to a poster, this was done by adding an image of the drink and copy to compliment the illustrative fruit image. The concept is still work in progress but is starting to look like a bold piece of design that could work as a poster.
The handdrawn type that was scanned.
After tracing it in Illustrator this was the result, which was a successful bold look.
Hand Drawn Type
Experiments with drawing on the fruit and the Sagmeister image.
By going back to the idea of drawing on the fruit and this time using a permanent pen, it stayed better on the surface and could create a bolder hand drawn type. But it was still very difficult drawing on the fruit and getting the positioning of the type correct so that it could all be seen when photographed. The next idea was to think how this concept could be created in a different way, and one image that was insprational was a piece by Stephan Sagmeister, where hand drawn type is digitally drawn on a face. The concept of vernacular type of fruit seemed to be more successful and being able to draw it on a flat surface allowed more control over the type.
Drink bottle to Illustration As the concept was using a quite limited colour palette putting an image of the drinks bottle into the page didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the composition. Instead using Illustrator and tracing the drinks bottle a one colour Illustrative image of the drink was created.
Images of the drinks were provided in the brief pack and were used to create an illustrative version of the drink. 19
Prototyping Writing on Fruit
Prototyping Poster Concept
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Cut Out Posters Whilst the images were working, it was pointed out that they looked a little bit flat and it could be interesting to cut out the type and image and photograph it to make it more 3D and handmade by using cut out images. Paper was bought to best match the colours in the images and the image was traced on to the paper and then cut it out using scissors and a scalpel. When photographed on a plain background it was hard to tell that it had been cut out, as the flash was getting rid of the shadows. The images were reshot in daylight and the shadows showed up better, helping to make the cut out effect more obvious and 3D. Adjusting the images in Photoshop allowed to get the best colours and brightness. The copy and drinks bottle was added to the image to turn it into a poster.
Illustrative Design Concept The vernacular type technique was used to created versions of the posters for each drink and they work well as a set, as they have all have the same layout and placement of text and image, with a limited colour palette.
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Final Design Concept Illustrative Design Concept
This process was then repeated for all 4 of the posters, so that they became a set. Examples of the stages the designs went through to get the photograph looking the best it could.
Final Design Concept Cut Out Posters
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Rationale This project was the first design competition brief that I have done, and has encouraged me to consider doing more in the future. I found researching the area of juice and water drinks very interesting and started to really notice and read up on the trend for “healthy” flavoured water and started to notice and visual style in their branding. I also started to understand the importance of copywriting as a way of communicating to the audience, and how it can be just as important as the visual elements on a page.
These images were also submitted to give the designs a sense of context of where they could be used in real life.
I found it easy to understand the tone of voice of the client, as I was able to look on their website, their Facebook page and previous campaigns. I found it harder not having the client to get feedback from throughout the stages of the project, instead I relied on feedback from tutors, students, friends and my understanding of the brand to think what they would like. As the target audience was people my age, I was able to understand the audience well and show my designs to my peers to gain feedback.
Submitting Designs To submit the entries to YCN the Fruit People designs were printed on A3 landscape, one design per page and a further page with all four designs on. For the Typography Cutout pieces each design was printed A3 portrait, along with a page with all four images on, and a page with some images of how the designs could be used on a bus stop billboard. To accompany the two design ideas was a short paragraph explaining the two designs and how it reflected Feel Good Drinks and could be used by them. These were submitted to the YCN headquarters in March, and the entries are being judges in April and May.
Target Audience Feedback Throughout the stages of the project the designs were shown to friends and peers who fit into the target audience catagory. I have recieved feedback for the final posters.
I did a lot of experiments and testing of ideas for the project and I think they really helped me develop the ideas to get to their final stages, without doing the earlier stuff I would not have come up with the later ideas. I really enjoyed creating stuff by hand and mixing hand made and computer skills together, wich I think compliments the design style of Feel Good Drinks.
Cut Out Posters “They fit very well into modern day graphic deisgn I could imagine them on a billboard they look professional and planned out.” “They are tactile, clear and fitted in with the Feel Good look and feel”
I ended up with two outcomes, this was because I found that two different target audiences tended to like each of the ideas. Young people involved with graphic design tended to prefer the cut out typographic posters, whereas people not involved in design preferred the fruit characters. As there was no limit to the number of responses you could give to the brief I decided that both would be developed and submitted as without having the feedback from the client, it was hard to know which one they would prefer. The cut out posters were something I had never tried before and I was worried that they wouldn’t photograph well but after some tweaking, I think they turned out very well. I think both outcomes pushed my photography skills as both outcomes were highly photographic, I am please they have managed to print well at A3. My Illustrator skills have also improved using this project as I need to trace objects, I have also understood the benefits of using levels on Photoshop and think I understand how to adjust colours better. I am looking forward to seeing if I receive any feedback from YCN or Feel Good Drinks on my submissions and overall have found this project enjoyable and useful as the project subject and style should lead into my final major project.
Fruit Characters “They are fun and make me laugh, they promote a healthy product in a different way to traditional healthy products” “I like the natural surrounding and the quotes the characters are saying.”
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Prototyping Writing on Fruit
Prototyping Poster Concept
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Bibliography Websites awards.ycnonline.com/ www.vitaminwater.co.uk www.vwater.com/ www.thiswater.co.uk www.makesweet.com www.fireflytonics.com www.innocentdrinks.co.uk www.jealousfruits.com www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m400d www.violentvegcards.com/ Books YCN Book 0809 Postcard Compiled by Fl@33 Introducing Designs for Making a First Impression Building a Brand from Nothing But Fruit by John Simmons Sagmeister: Things I have learned in my Life so far by Stephan Sagmeister
Final Outcomes Copies of the final designs for this project have been submitted as A3 prints alongside this project.
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.� Groucho Marx
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Additional Information Bibliography