Brief For the third and final brief this year we were given the brief of choosing one of the YCN or ISTD
For our first brief this year we were given the subject ‘conversation’. Task: This module enables you to develop at Honours level the integrated design methodologies required to work in a dynamic, professional, creative and commercial environment. The introduction of more demanding projects support and generate a greater in-depth knowledge and understanding or easthetic, environmental, marketing and technical requirements of design for the creative industries. Emphasis is placed upon the ability to develop high-level flexible thinking approaches in the pursuit of creative solutions. The assignments will incorporate a range of stringent professional requirements, involving personal time management, detailed research, creativity and originality, as well as a high level of technical expertise.
Requirements: A portfolio of designs involving a high degree of creative and technical skill and also market justification, in which there is a clear reasoned and personal response to the requirements of the brief. Background material in the form of research and concept development will be of a high standard and will clearly support the final outcome. Each assignment will incorporate a high degree of finish and presentation, with all aspects of the brief taken into account.
Graphic Notation & John Cage John Cage was an American composer and music theorist. Critics have lab led him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century as he was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. He is probably best known for for his 4’33” composition which is completely devoid of msuci, simply using the sound of these who are present. Cage also developed visual scores. Instead of using standard musical notation, he instead drew diagrams and abstract lines or shapes in order to delineate sounds, rhythm, and other musical elements. These would often then be interpreted by the musicians. Examples of John Cage’s work right and below.
Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is often used in combination with traditional music notation. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective.
Riley Farrell Whilst looking for work to do with graphic notation of music I came across a designer named Riley Farrell Riley Farrell is a Minneapolisbased graphic designer. He graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design in 2010, and is currently working as one half of the design team at a marketing & design agency in Minneapolis’ North Loop. There, he enjoys taking on a variety of challenging projects: motion graphics, web and mobile platforms, detailed product brochures, brand identities, product packaging and trade show displays among many others. Riley treats every project as an opportunity for clear and engaging communication, and like many other designers, he favors the simpler and more elegant solutions. These posters are inspired by John Cage and followers’ graphic method of musical scoring. The diagrams have been designed as representations of music that already exists, and serve as visuals for a promotional concert poster series. I really like the inclusion of text within the notation itself.
Matyou Galea
Another artist to do with graphic notation I came across was Matyou Galea. A man from the small island nation of Malta. Though not much can be found of him online, he seems to have a passion for nature. Though I do not even begin to understand the meaning behind his project The Emerald Tablet of Hermes. I do like the examples he gives of possible notations. Left is a video of some of his other work.
Music Is Interesting Can’t find out who this image is buy but it’s titled ‘Noise is Music’ (Right) This is a poster of periodic table of music notation, I think it’s great. (Far Right) Amazing glasses that show you were to fill up to to create that note when you play musical glasses. (Bottom Right) I like these wooden pieces for a pairs matching memory game. (Below) A cheaper version of the wooden ones. I think writing letters of notes on the other side and putting these in a bag would be a great way of creating random compositions. (Below)
Kumbee Choi Kumbee Choi is an illustrator and motion graphics designer local to New York City. He mainly uses bold colours and lines for his designs and illustrations. The Visual Music for junior typography class. I interpreted the music piece into visual combined with type. Different instruments in the music were analyzed and became visible elements. I chose New Born by Muse. The music was really challenging because of its fast tempo and combination of many instrument, but I felt joy from working on this project very much.
George Crumb George Crumb is a West Virginian composer or contemporary classical music. He is well known for his experimental alternative forms of notation. I especially like his spiral composition (Bottom Right) the shape reminds me of DaVinci and the golder spiral.
Cat Balfour
Cat Balfour is a graphic designer and musician living and working in Auckland, New Zealand and is a recent graduate from Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design. As well as graphic design she enjoys ‘working with hand generated work’ and enjoys painting, drawing and scree printing. This experimental project looks at the idea of visualising timbre. Timbre is the combination of qualities of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume. By translating sound frequencies into colour I was able to produce prints that would visually explain notes of an octave and their overtones. Overtones are frequencies that occur when you play an instrument, which are not consciously heard but is what makes instruments sound different (timbre). Moire patterns were used to visualise the interference of the overtone sound waves creates when a note is played.
Look At The World
I thought the best place to start with developmental work was to simply graphically visualise some music. I opened my piano stool and grabbed the first sheet music to hand which was ‘Look at The World’ by John Rutter. This is actually a good song to use as it is an SATB score so there are lots of different parts, as well as a lot of visual imagery in the lyrics. I started by highlighting the notes belonging to each instrument/voice in a different colour before gridding a photoshop document horizontally for note duration and vertically for pitch (based on C major). While it isn’t entirely accurate. A centimetre representing a tone difference in some places and a semitone difference in others (as dictated by the C major scale). I think it is an accurate representation of the first part of the piece. The piece I used, my graphic notation is from the first 40 seconds. I like all the use of imagery in the song, although I am not a religious person, I think people of any belief can enjoy this song.
Historical Music Notation
Top left is an image of one of 6 ancient Egyptian parchments described by German musicologist Hans Hickmann in his 1956 book ‘Musicologie Pharaonique’. The piece is believed to be from approximately 6th century AD. The colours are presumed to indicate pitch and size the duration. The writing at the top of the image is in Coptic Egyptian and indicates “Spiritual Harmony” and “Holy Hymn Singer”. The top left hand corner seems to have a key in it which looks an awful lot like a keyboard though I suppose that is just my western take on it. Bottom left is the oldest musical notation known so far. Lutes are not preserved from the Old Babylonian period. The earliest known description of a lute dates from the middle of the 10th c., of a 9th c. instrument, Oxford, Bodleian library MS Marsh 521. The present notation system gives contemporary information on the Old Babylonian 4 stringed lute. It further attests that frets were used, and that their values, tonal and semitonal, were purposely calculated. Most significantly the discovery of this text attests of a music syllabus in educational institutions about 4000 years ago. Although fairly recently produced (19th century) the scroll top right is from Mongolia I’m sure you will agree is a piece of art in itself. I love the carefully drawn lines with the little flourishes in them, I think it’s beautiful.
Joanne Berry – Nidderdale Pool
Upon looking at my John Rutter graphic notation it reminded me of my local swimming pool. Joanne Berry (a graphic designer from Burnley) was asked to design a vinyl artwork to appear on the ‘feature glazed wall’ which is 33m long at the front of the building for it’s opening in 2003. The perspex panel made by members of the Nidderdale. The work has 30 A3 sheets of linked perspex with designs transferred from refined drawings of the surrounding landscape There is also an installation piece of linked pieces of perspex with drawings transferred on them. Students from my primary school as well as form the high school were asked to use geometric forms to create images of the surrounding landscape. Sadly I don’t have a picture of my own panel but the images above from left to right are: My classmate Amber’s piece, my classmate Ryan’s piece, a piece done by a high school student and below a picture of primary schoolers doing the workshop (I’m probably in that photo somewhere it is just to small to see), the drawings that were created and on the left the high school students working.
Finger Position Charts Finger position charts and charts that show where fingers should be placed in order to create a certain note on an instrument. (Far left) These series of dots dictate the note, I think this is somewhat similar to the Egyptian notation and could itself be used to create art. I took the beginning of John Rutter’s ‘Look at the World’ again and used it to create some experiments based on flute finger position. (Left) I also rearranged it and added background, it looks somewhat like a city scape apart from the hovering buildings. (Top)
Brad Tober
Brad Tober is an Assistant Graphic Design Professor at the University of Illinois. ‘My work explores the potential of emerging code-based and interactive visual communication technologies, with the objective of developing (often speculative) applications of them to design practice and pedagogy.’ Graphical representations of three separate pieces of music were created through a method that emphasized an instantaneous, rather than linear, experience of each measure. The first twelve measures of each piece are shown.
Daniel Reed
Musician and graphic design Daniel Reed intends to create work ‘that provokes meaningful and emotional responses.’ Cymatic experiment producing visual patterns from notes on a piano. Each note on the piano was played and recorded, then turned into a visual pattern based on its Hz value. Below is a list of all the visual diagrams I got when completing the experiment. After completing my first project exploring cymatics, I was offered the facilities and software to carry out the experiment in much more detail leading to a more refined set of visual results. The posters above are chords and demonstrate the visual relationship between certain notes and frequencies.
Matthias Dittrich
Matthias Dittrich is a interaction designer born in Berlin and now working in Amsterdam. Narrative 2.0 visualises music. The music was segmented in single channels. The channels are shown fanlike and the lines move from the center away with the time. The angle of the line changes according to the frequency of the channel, while the frequency reaching a high level, the channel becomes highlighted by orange. The visualisation should not necessarily return exact informations, even if the arrangement and uniformity of the music can be read. The purpose was to create even more an aesthetically responding visualisation with the music as an artist.
Verdi’s Requiem
I’ve come across two students from the south of England, Elisabeth Jones and Chloe (a.k.a CC Creations), who have both been given Verdi’s Requiem as part of their briefs. I’m not sure if they both study graphic design at the University of Creative Arts but Chloe certainly does. They were given this music and told to create a response using footage, a typography response and a graphic notation response, the later being what I’m most interested in.
Andy Fillebrown
Andy Fillebrown is a film scoring graduate from Massachusetts currently living in Kentucky. He uses coding and java applets to visualise music and then uploads the results online. He has a wide range of videos, here are just a few. I find them really interesting and strangely mesmorising.
Initial Ideas After looking over all my interesting elements/principles from a previous studio lecture, I wittled them down to my favourites: 3:1) Images from music 3:2) Graphic Notation of Music 3:1) Tactile music 3:1) Book Instead Of Album 3:2) Each Song With Own Sculpture Therefore, my final concepts are all to do with graphically depicting songs.
Concept 1 Make an animation of graphic graphic notation of certain songs. Take a survey of peoples emotions and feelings towards a song and use this to create an animation of the song like this example below. Concept 2 Create posters for songs or a book for an album of graphic notation. Use the egyptian musical notation, Brad Tober or Daniel Reed as a basis for the work. Concept 3 Create an installation piece based on a song. Create a 3D representation of a song, similar to that of Andy Fillbraun but as an installation.
Brad Tober Experiments
I then used John Rutter’s score and a series of clipping mask to produce this, the first 16 bars of the soprano stave. Whilst it isn’t quite as decorative as his since their are no overlapping notes, I still think it is rather pretty.
Experiments Having seen this kind of design online demonstrating genomes. I took the first verse and chorus of Robie Williams ‘Angels’ what with it being one of the most popular songs of all time. I used the vocal line and took a circle and placed note values around it. I then used the pen tools to trace between notes as they are song thus demonstrating the number of times each note is played as shown by the number of lines coming from it. I used these soft colours because they reflect the tone of the song and used different colours for the tone of each phrase.
Final Outcome
Press to play
For my final outcome I came across a lovely piece online entitled ‘Don’t’ It’s a lovely short piano piece. I’m not entriyl sure who it is written by but it is beautiful. I then made concentric circles of all the notes on of the scale and used the pen tool to create a mask and cover the bits that were not being played. My final outcome is to the left the colours just being used to diferentiate between the notes.
Final Outcome
I copied it into Photoshop and made it white where the notes are with a black background. I added a paper texture to liven it up a bit and added a blue overly as I felt blue reflected the tone of the piece. I felt it was a bit boring still so went on to put it into Cinema 4D.
Final Outcome
In Cinema 4D I made the section depth relative to the octave of the note. For example middle C would be 200cm the C above it 250cm and the C below it 150cm long. I added a steel effect as my final piece is more of a concept than an actual outcome. The idea you could create one of these of your favourite song and have it as an installation piece. I then used photoshop and two slightly different camera angles to create a 3D effect for the one on the right.
Brief ‘If a brand results from a set of associations and perceptions in people’s minds, then branding is an attempt to harness, generate, influence and control these associations to help the business perform better. Any organisation can benefit enormously by creating a brand that presents the company as distinctive, trusted, exciting, reliable or whichever attributes are appropriate to that business.’ - Design Council This project will involve you working with others to explore the potential of branding, collaboratively compile, share and analyse research and individually work up concepts and outcomes. This project has 2 x main sets of tasks. 1 x group, where you are required to collaborate and share research and the 2nd set where you will develop and produce your own individual outcomes. Group Tasks: - Form a group of 4 or 5 people - Review the independent companies, commercial ventures and organisations based in the centre of Huddersfield that you feel would benefit from a rebrand and choose one to use for this project - Research this company, commercial venture or organisation to determine it’s key offer, services, attributes, characteristics etc - Research and build insight into who the main target audiences are and determine what would increase their engagement and commitment with your chosen company, commercial venture or organisation - Allocate tasks and share the group’s findings
Individual Tasks: - Drawing from the group research, develop ideas and produce a set of new brand guidelines that positively rebrands your chosen company, commercial venture or organisation - Produce the required outcomes for assessment
Brief Requirements: - A completed set of brand guidelines submitted as a PDF showing the brand elements, assets and components (minimum of 10 pages and maximum of 25 pages) - A range of applied examples of the brand guidelines in use (minimum of 3 examples and maximum of 5) - A designed, A4 landscape research document saved as a PDF that shows the complete developmental process of your set of brand guidelines from research, analysis, ideas generation, development and prototyping of the proposed final outcomes (minimum of 25 pages and maximum of 30 pages) - A short written piece of reflective evaluation on how the project went (250 words max)
Suggested starting points:
Considerations:
Aims:
- Within your group, visit the town centre and take time to review the range of independent companies, commercial ventures and organisations that you could select as your client
- Make sure you undertake the group tasks early – not doing so will cause issues and problems later down the line.
- Undertake and apply real world research.
- Individually and collectively read up on and research approaches and practice related to branding - Draw upon the materials from the various lectures you have attended this term - Utilise the research methods and design processes shown to you - Decide upon some kind of online file collaborative sharing platform to share your group’s research - Allocate meeting communication points
times
and
- Please be mindful of the company, commercial venture or organisation you research and choose. - Do not do anything you feel would interfere or disrupt their business or customers. - Please refer to the Ethics section below and follow the links for guidance.
- Develop a range of practical outcomes through research and development. - Examine branding as an area of graphic design practice. - Innovate and explore technical parameters. - Create a contemporary portfolio pieces. - Produce work aimed at a specific target audience.
Primary Research Today we took a trip into the town centre to look at existing small local businesses. We took note of the branding of the companies, particularly the front signage of the stores. We found both examples of good logo design and bad logo design and realised there are several businesses that could benefit from a complete rebrand. Many of the businesses seemed to use plain fonts and weren’t very creative or colourful at all, where others such as takeaways looked as if they were made using WordArt, looking cheap and tacky. The main types of stores we came across included takeaways, cafes & restaurants, salons and clothing stores. We also collected leaflets and flyers to take into consideration how they promote their brands and came to the realisation that many of them used various logos and hadn’t really branded themselves consistently at all.
Primary Research
Primary Research
I like this logo from ‘TEEBOY’ I think it is somewhat modern and would appeal to the kind of audience they are going for.
Horrific and a rip off in so many ways.
Lovely well thought through logo.
Quit like this one. Simpathetic use of font as well as a nice design.
Bota Fogo and The Blue Rooms are definitly my favourite.
Classic use of papyrus font.
Whilst simple, I do think ‘coffee cali’ is nice and perfectly reflects the business. These are a few of my favourites for both bad and good reasons.
Don’t like the strange spelling, font or colour choices.
Lovely old worldy jazzy logo very inkeeping with the style of the business and the building it is situated in.
Bota Fogo
Bota Fogo is a Brazillian grill in Huddersfield. I took a screen shot of it because I think it has good branding and is an example of continuous use of identity, especially for a small independent restaurant. They follow a concept of illustrative and bold type using bright colours. This gives the brand an exciting and inviting appearance. You get the feeling of a happy bustling place with a positive new experience waiting. As it is a Brazillian Grill, this suits the place well. The logo is quite simple with bold font in a circle. It has a modern look and is quite different to the typical coffee bar. It has a move expensive taste to the design than the others we have looked at.
Prospective Businesses & Formats
Here I have created a mind map to allow us to see what platforms we could use to help local businesses reach potential customers. I have looked into different the main different types of businesses we came across during out research that appeared would benefit from a complete rebrand. I found that food based businesses could use a wide variety of outcomes to promote themselves, along with Supermarkets and general stores. Fashion and Beauty followed close by, however we will now look at which stores are in most need of a refreshing look. After collecting images of existing independent businesses around Huddersfield centre, I quickly made a mind map to enable me to analyse what types of business took up the majority of the town centre. I coloured coded the map to make things more clear. As you can see when you zoom in, food and beverage is the most popular business type, then beauty and fashion. I noticed that quite frankly nearly all the business had very poor design aesthetics, particularly cafes and salons. As a group, we will be looking into which business we could benefit the most from a rebrand. This will involve looking at promotional methods and how we can expand their customer base through these.
Huddersfield Moodboard As one of the group tasks we had to create a set of 3 moodboards. I started off by creating one of Huddersfield, this included events it holds, history of the place as well as sights and celebrities. The purpose is to help pick up the essence of the area so that we understand more about the community, potential customers and how the local businesses need to fit in with their surroundings.I found out a variety of in-depth information, from random facts such as The University of Huddersfield is the largest employer in the town, to the fact we have 7 Greggs just in the centre! These are little things we will keep in mind when continuing our research
Coffee Shop Moodboard I then went on to create a moodboard for coffee shops itself. On it I put images of products sold as well as logos, interiors and people who frequent them.
Here’s Katie with the moodboard at our presentation.
Target Audience Moodboard Finally, I made a moodboard on the target audience of coffee shops. I used information gained in the questionnaires and through the use of the yougov profiler to compile it.
Here’s Katie with the moodboard at our presentation.
Coffee Chains Everyone knew who would be number one, with 21,000 across the globe Starbucks is by far the world leader of the coffee chains. With only 770 in the UK (half that of Costa) it isn’t the runner here. I also think Starbucks has been significantly damaged in this country since in 2011 it came to light that it avoided corporation tax having made £400m and paying nothing. This is done by them paying other parts of the business and buying coffee etc. and reporting no profit. Even though it is the world leader, when it comes to us Brits, we just enjoy picking on Starbucks too much with them nearly being out locationed by Caffé Nero with over 600 stores in the UK. Founded in the early 70’s this coffee chain is the most popular in the UK with 1,755 Locations. As well as this, many places sell Costa with vending facilities also available in places such as canteens and WhilstnotavailableintheUK,TomHortonsisatoprunnerinCanadaandtheUSwith5,400petrol stations with approximately locations. In Canada it has supposed host McDonalds and Starbucks in sales since 2002.3,500 of these in the UK alone. McCafé is owned and operated by McDonald’s. As an extension of McDonald’s it often operated jointly with McDonald’s restaurants therefor taking advantage of store locations. Though there are currently no locations in the UK it is growing in popularity across the continent. The number of how many McCafé stores there are is a bit sketchy since in the UK they sell McCafé products without a separate store or specific baristas but from the restaurants.
Since opening in Massachusetts in the 50’s it has spread to over 33 countries and has a menu of over 1,000 items and over 11,000 locations. Whilst it is affiliated with several American sports teams, in 2014 it also entered into a partnership with Liverpool United. It now has 14 stores in the south of the UK after returning 20 years after its departure.
I decided to look at the top coffee chains across the world.
Market and Questionnaire Here is a list I have created of the coffee market in Huddersfield. I have collected small local businesses in order to be able to compare them when placing this on the market place. They mostly fit in the same pricing and popularity criteria and so are in competition with each other. Our next step is to create a survey to find to hand out to selected possible businesses we will chose to rebrand to find out who their target market is, how they want people to see them and what they offer. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Coffeevolution Espresso Corner Choosy’s tea and coffee Heritage Coffee Mill Bistro Cafe Society 4 Cousins Coffee Kabin Time Circa 2010 Rhubarb Queenie’s Coffee shop Mymou Coffee Venecia Casa Gelato Edwards Creams British Luxury The Good Food Bussiness Cafe Bliss The Little Kitchen The Blue Rooms Verve Annie’s Pantry Cafe Ollo Street Cafe Pumpkin Cafe Shop The Latte Hut
Left is a questionnaire we have created to find out more specific information about the cafés. This should give us an insight of how similar coffee businesses promote themselves and what they offer in comparison to each other.
Interior Design Coffeekabin Had a very warm and inviting atmosphere with up cycled kitsch items. Black board for menus and glass jars for sugar pots. They also featured a water station and sold unique independent products. It was a very cosy place with a rustic feel. Coffee Cali Typical coffee place, similar to the style of Costa Coffee. Seemed a more expensive place in comparison to the others, wouldn’t say it fitted in quite the same category. Nothing special about the decor. Modern simple look. Branding flowed quite fluently through the design, however it appears a little plain. Nothing to make it stand out from the market, could do with an update to add interest. The Courtyard One of a kind tea room, quite well hidden in an alleyway. Very vintage and thrifted aesthetics. Feature wall with plates and paintings. Had lots of decor such as teapots, art and bunting. Various mix and match cake stands and 1960’s furniture. Unusual in comparison to the other coffee shops in the area. Quite busy on the eye, seemed quite claustrophobic but had a nice warming atmosphere.
Espresso Corner Very similar atmosphere to Coffeekabin except a little tackier. Although still quite small, seemed a lot more open due to the glass front windows. Featured a bike on the wall and an illustrated black board menu. Didn’t sell as many unique products however had just as good food selection. Old school desks for tables and recycled syrup tins for sugar pots. Seemed very homely and friendly but could do with a modern update or refresh to the branding.
Whilst handing out the questionnaires we asked for permission to take pictures of the coffee shops and they obliged.
Questionnaire Results Here are the results from our questionnaires. It was quite difficult to gather information as many of the businesses we visited didn’t have time to fill it out or were too busy for us. The four we managed to get a response from all had similar interiors. They had a kitsch design, using homely decorations such as bunting, teapots, and vintage lighting. Here is a quick summary of the average information collected: • Majority sold: hot & cold drinks, sandwiches & paninis, cakes, and hot food • All had a take-out service while only half had free wifi • Target audience: students, families, business people and sometimes OAPS, parents and tourists, ageing from 18-40 • Most popular items sold included lattes and paninis and most offered student discount or other promotions • 3/4 said they spent nothing on advertisement while one said they spent £500-£1k. The most popular method of self promotion seemed to be social media while some used flyers & business cards • Half said they regularly used social media and most preferred Facebook & Twitter
Espresso Corner Once we’d decided that it was Espresso Corner we were going to try out because of what appears to be confused signage with two different logos my flat mate and I went on a reconnaissance and tried the place out. It gives a very cosy rustic, yet modern feel. The inside is beautiful with a bike on the wall, lampshade-less lights as well as salvaged school tables and chairs and illustrated black boards for the price list. Instead of sugar bowls they have old treacle tins with cute spoons and I love the cups with their harmonious colours. It has a very kitsch appearance inside, the outside doesn’t really do the place justice as the logo is poor and doesn’t suit the style. It has a vintage homely aura and relaxing music. The prices were similar to Starbucks (around £2.60 for a hot chocolate with optional marshmallows). They had a range of hot drinks, cold drinks cakes and other snacks. Compared to other coffee shops in the Huddersfield centre, this one is unique on the market, not the typical greasy spoon cafe.
Café Craft
Café Craft is a café in the centre of Paris. I came across it whilst looking on a website featuring well designed café from around the world. In the modern era the term internet café has somewhat lost meaning with everyone having various computer devices and wi-fi being available everywhere but this is a café worthy of the name. They are described by their customers as having a modern classy design. They have large tables, comfy chairs and an abundance of power outlets for you to plug laptops in. High speed wifi, ethernet jacks and all for free! NOT TO MENTION THE FREE REFILLS!!!!! Craft is a cafe for those who don’t have offices: students, freelancers, in short those who are working behind their computer but don’t have an office. Those who can’t say in the morning “I’m off to the office”, but must still work. The logo is set in monotone and has a very simplistic appearance to it. It suits the style of the interior, following the colour scheme and the general aura of the place giving it a fluent flow in design. Although it doesn’t appear to relate very much to the business type and i’m unsure of the actual meaning behind the logo, I like geometric shapes and the contrast and boldness of the brand. It appears modern and classy and would fit in well with todays surroundings.
Society Café
Society Café is a group of two coffee shops in Bath. I decided to have a look into this cafe as it’s similar to Espresso Corner in Huddersfield. It features the bike on the wall and the old school lighting and seating. This would be a typical competitor of Espresso Corner who is doing well on the market. They have the same kitsch style and type of menu. Looking at Society Café’s branding and other competitors will be helpful when coming to rebrand Espresso Cafe as we can see what other styles and logo’s brand has chosen to get a good idea of what works well and what doesn’t. Society’s ‘urban living space’ is designed with all of us in mind. Come park your bike, buggy, dog. Come with friends, to maybe make new ones or come alone for some solitude and people-watching. Come drink some perfectly prepared coffee, exquisite tea or hot chocolate made from chunks of the real thing. Come have delicious cake, homemade granola with yoghurt and compote, fresh sandwiches and healthy treats for children. As well as filling your tummy, if you feel like it, you could also feed your mind – art house books and magazines, exhibitions, from time to time we welcome artists in residence and for children there is a creative space designed to get ideas going (giving Mum and Dad a chance to collapse into a sofa and relax!).
Espresso Corner: Moodboard As a group we have decided to focus on Espresso Corner as it has real potential but seems to lack fluent branding. They are currently using 2 different logos for social media and branding. Both don’t seem to be visually strong or give a good representation of the essense of the business. I have decided to create a mood board of the current aesthetics and values of Espresso Corner. The mood board includes photographs of the outside and interior of the cafÊ, the target market, colour schemes, use of promotion, location and current branding.
Café Themes In order to decide what kind of café our branding would be for and thus determine whether we would want to change the café in anyway, we created a list of possible café themes based on cafés and restaurants we frequent. • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Modern/Hipster Classic/Boring Natural Earthy Village Hall Canteen Minimalist/Modern Farm Shop Afternoon Tea Rustic Country Bohemian Gentlemens Club Homely Themed Cute
We then opted for a couple themes each and used the pictures we had pinned to our pinterest board. We used the same template in order to make it look a bit more consistand and a little professional.
I did moodboards for what I called ‘Ice Cream Dream’. This is based on the many ice cream palours I have in my local area. With pastel colours and upcycled furniture they are definitly a theme of their own. ‘Afternoon Tea’ I think of Betty’s Tea Rooms with silver tea sets, tiny cakes and piano music playing in the background. ‘Victoriana’ is based on a victorian gentlemens club with antique globes, leather furniture and wood panneling.
Café Themes The ‘Earthy’ theme was mainly based on Starbucks’ aesthetic. The natural appearence is not so prevelant in Starbucks except for it’s natural wood shelves, use of blackboards and displays making use of rafia etc.
The ‘Minimalist’ style was based a little on Espresso corners current design as well as many coffee shops you can find around. Little decorative furnishing but with lote of use of wood. Form follows function.
Café Themes This ‘Retro’ theme came up as an idea for a themed café. This was very common in places such as Japan and America but I’m not sure how popular they are over here, I imagine they died a death long ago.
This ‘Sixties Kitch’ is pretty much a representation of what Espresso Corner is currently like. Blackboards, brown paper and brown colours scheme with quirky lighting and bikes on the wall.
Contemporary Café Designs (Left) I absolutely love the look of this café. The way it brings foliage inside. You vary really see plants in shops, cafés or restaurants except perhaps for the occasional flower. This makes the place feel much more down to earth and calming (Right) This is a classic example this kind of café. It uses natural materials (wood etc.) to provide and earth, rustic feel. (Far Right) These stools are the apathy of current café styles. Bar stools are very in vogue.
Current Food & Drink Packaging
I researched current food and drink packaging by looking at designs on Pinterest. These show a lot of contemporary and bespoke designs created the world over. Here are a few of my favourites: William Whistle (Far Left) has lovely illustrations with content related coloured fills. Amulet (Left) have a lovely themed design withh a beautiful container I’m sure people keep. Great idea from Astronaut (Above) using ground coffee beans to make a stencil, silhouette style illustration, beautiful. Caribou Coffee (Right) have lovely and innovative typographical cups.
Current Food & Drink Packaging Rare Barrel (Far Left) have a lovely minimalist 70’s/80’s style bottle. Tad Carpenter’s design for Harvey’s (Left) uses multiple vintage labels printed as packaging for various stationery and food stuffs. Madcap’s design (Below Left) has a great use of bold colours to contrast with the dominant black and finally Noa Potions uses nice colours with monochrome packaging, the white contrasting with the colour of the contents.
Contemporary Design
(Top Left) In this I like how the objects are both behind and in front of the frame with classic white for frame and text colour. (Bottom Left) These sorts of vintage yet modern logos are synonymous with hipsters. (Above) This is also a common style with off centre text and use of negative space. (Right) This is a classic example of hipster design with selections of the images flipped.
Contemporary Design
(Far Left) Beautiful use of sans serif font with in front and behind black and white illustrations. (Above) This image uses a similar process but with various rotations of a selection of an image. I reverse engineered the image above working out the rotation of each sections. I then took a picture of my own, applied a photoshop action to make it look ‘hipster-fied’. I then used the selection and masking tools to select the varying concentric circles before rotating them the necessary degrees.
Initial Ideas My initial opinion on the logos used by Espresso Corners are somewhat confusing. This first one (White on black) is your typical boring logo, not very inspiring. The second one seems to be in keeping with the place but doesn’t seem to fit in with espresso or corner in anyway and the name had just been reduced to corner. Here are a few of my initial sketches.
Initial Ideas
I think the cup and bike ideas are too complicated and the purely text ones are a bit boring. I think the cup and bean logo designs are the best to take forward. For how they look and fit in with the theme I’m going to use the simple bean logo just above.
Idea Development CORNER
COFFEE
I like this because it’s simple and only uses two colours, it’s contemporary and works with and without the text. I changed the name here to ‘Coffee Corner’ simply for convenience. It has the same number of letters and both begin with ‘C’ to add some i l l it e r at ion . If it were on black background I would add a white line around the black portion of the logo. I then thought as a bit of individuality to each use of the logo if it were on say a bacon sandwhich, one half would be bread colour and the other half would be bacon colour. Here are a few colours. I’m not really conviced with this so think I will experiment a bit more with logos.
C C O O F R F N E E E R
C C O O F R F N E E E R
Idea Development 1.
2.
5.
6.
3.
1. Your basic coffee bean. 2. Added some corners to fit in with the name ‘Espresso Corner’. 3. Thought I could make this into a lightning bolt how coffee gives you energy. 4. The angles were too steep on the previous one so I made the smaller. 5. I moved the ‘bolt’ above the middle like a normal lightning bolt. 6. I moved the start and end points on the ‘bolt’ further out to look more dramatic.
4.
Idea Development I initially wanted a semi circle of rays with dots or stars at the end surrounding the logo. Sadly after a long time this seemed to avoid me and just looked rediculous so I went online for inspiration. I found bottom right on google and thought that instead of a circle the rays should form a diferent pattern so I came up with the logo on the left. I also smoothed out the angles on the bean so it would look smoother.
Number 5 was my favourite so I am going to develop this further. I feel it needs a bit of a background to bring it out and make it look individual. A few scribbles on my idea for further deleoping my logo.
Idea Development Since I didn’t really like anything about this, I felt the bean was too domination, the text didn’t really fit in and the rays looked like they didn’t really look like what they were doing. So instead I took inspiration from the google image again and thought about adding a banner.
I initially just put a three tiered banner behing the logo, I felt one tier is just a a ribbon, two is a banner but three really made it. I felt a plain banner was pretty boring so I looked up some style of shading that this kind of design had. I saw an example of stripes and triangles being used so I thought I’d give it a go. This looked good but meant that the bean blended in with the banner instead of standing out so I added a whilte stroke around it to make it stand out.
E S R S P S
ORNE
In my first attempt (Top Right) I used text on a path to create the text. I wasn’t very happy with the kerning of the letters especially on the ‘corner’ so in my second attempt I adjusted each letter individually. I also tried having ‘corner’ the right way up but the kerning was just so off and it didn’t look very circular so I went back to having it upside down.
C
R
O
E
Idea Development
Final Idea The final version contains more individual adjustments to the kerning. This is my final design on illustrator but I want to go on to edit it in Photoshop.
Final Idea
I created logos in both black and white as well as one in a brown paper texture to give it a bit of variety. I also created some alternative logos for where the full version wasn’t useable which includes a pureply pictographic version as well as two text version, one to stand alone and one to be used where ‘Espresso Corner’ would be repeated, on packaging tape etc.
Espresso Corner Espresso Corner | Espresso Corner
Brand Guidelines
I looked at a variety of brand guidelines, including AT&T, Starbucks and Adobe. I thought the most essential pages for any set of brand guidelines are: • Logo Design • Logo Colours • Alternative Logos • Clear Space & Minimum Size • Positioning • Rules • Colour Palette • Typeface I’m also going to include my mock-ups in there as I think it really gives you a sense of the possible applications of the logo.
Espresso Corner Identity Guidelines
These guidelines have been developed to ensure that a consistent identity is achieved throughout all Espresso Corner products. They explain how to use our logo and colours correctly. If you have any questions at all please contact the Espresso Corner marketing team.
Contents 1. Logo Design 2. Logo Colours 3. Alternative Logo 4. Clear Space & Minimum Size 5. Positiong 6. Rules 7. Colour Palette 8. Typeface 9. Examples of Use
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Logo Design Our logo design is made up of 4 elements 1. ‘Espresso’ 2. Lightning Bean 3. Banner 4. ‘Corner’ No border shouuld be applied but how these 4 logo elements appear together should never be altered, nor any of the elements separated.
Logo Colours Our logo is available in three colour versions. The main logo (black) should be used when reproduction is available in only black and white and/or on a light coloured background.
Main Logo (Black)
The main logo (brown texture overlay) should be used when reproduction is available in colour and is on a suitable background. e.g. non textured The main logo (white) should be used when reproduction is available in only black and white and/or on a dark coloured background.
Main Logo (Brown Texture Overlay)
There are exceptions to the rules and which ever logo is most suitable for the application. Main Logo (White)
Alternative Logo Where a large picture logo isn’t appropriate there are two variations on the logo for you to choose from. One purely text and one a condenced image. The rules on alterations, colours and typeface still apply to these though the spacing, minimum size and positioning is left to your discression though it should always be placed centrally where possible. The bottom of the two text versions is to be used in instances where it would be repeated, packaging tape, borders etc.
Espresso Corner Espresso Corner | Espresso Corner |
Clear Space & Minimum Size We maintain the integrity of our logo by never owerlapping it with graphics, text, photography or illustrations (except on the examples provided). Our logo should always placed over all other elements of design. When using our logo it must have a minimum clear space around it (right). The distance is 5mm minimum or proportionally that of half the width of one portion of the banner (see arrow). To ensure legibility, the minimum width for reproduction of the main logo is 25mm.
25mm
Positioning Our logo should be positioned centrally bother horizontally and vertically where possible. When main logo (brown textured overlay) is used as a background the entirity of the left banner and letter ‘E’ of ‘Espresso’ should be seen, the visibility of the rest of the logo is up to user preference.
Rules We maintain the integrity of our logo by never owerlapping it with graphics, text, photography or illustrations (except on the examples provided). Our logo should always placed over all other elements of design.
Do not alter our logo
Do not change our typeface
Do not alter our name
Do not remove any part of our logo
Do not use alternative colours
Do not distort our logo
When using our logo it must have a minimum clear space around it (right). The distance is 5mm minimum or proportionally that of half the width of one portion of the banner (see arrow). To ensure legibility, the minimum width for reproduction of the main logo is 25mm.
Colour Palette Colour is an important part of any logo. We have two parts to our colour palette - main colours and tints. These colours shouuld be matched accurately to ensure that they always appear consistant across materials. The brown is included though the overlay texture should be used wherever possible. Tints of the main colours may be used to create variety. The tints can be derived from either CMYK, RGB or web breakdowns. Any tiny can be used and opposite are examples of 100 per cent, 85 per cent, 70 per cent, 55 per cent, 40 per cent, 25 per cent, 10 per cent and 0 per cent.
White C0 M0 Y0 K0 R255 G255 B255 Web #FFFFFF
Brown C24 M44 Y57 K15 R181 G137 B104 Web #B58968
Black C91 M79 Y62 K97 R0 G0 B0 Web #000000
Typeface The California FB family of fonts is the official Espresso Corner typeface. It is to be used for the creation of all logos and both printed and digital materials. California FB is a standard font available on Windows computers and for free download.
California FB ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890.,/<>?;’\:”|[]{}-=_+!@#$%^&*() California FB Bold ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890.,/<>?;’\:”|[]{}-=_+!@#$%^&*() California FB Italic ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890.,/<>?;’\:”|[]{}-=_+!@#$%^&*()
Examples of Use
Examples of Use
Brief For the third and final brief this year we were given the brief of choosing one of the YCN or ISTD
For our third and final brief for this year, we were given the brief, to choose a brief from either YCN or ISTDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s student briefs.
Task: You are invited to work on a selection of live creative briefs, written by commercial organisations, each offering a range of challenges. This will enable you to benefit from engaging fully with contemporary communication challenges, gain increased confidence, visibility and employability, and a unique opportunity to showcase your emerging creative talent. This project will require you to explore, compile, share and analyse, research and individually work up concepts and outcomes. Research the company, commercial venture or organisation to determine itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s key offer, services, attributes, characteristics etc Research, analyse and build insight into who the main target audiences are and determine what would increase their engagement and commitment with your chosen company, commercial venture or organisation, as proposed by your chosen brief.
Requirements: A set of design solutions submitted as a PDF showing the brand elements, assets and components to meet the commercial brief requirements. A range of mood boards, storyboards, strategies, research components and notes, submitted as PDFs as part of a research and development portfolio. Using InDesign, produce an A4 landscape research document saved as a PDF that shows the complete developmental process, from initial research, analysis, ideas generation, development and prototyping of the proposed final outcomes. (minimum of 25 pages and maximum of 30 pages) A short written piece of reflective evaluation on how the project went (250 words max).
YCN Briefs After receiving the brief I went on to look at the YCN online briefs Gap: Create a student brand campaign to bring traffic to the stores. Interflora: Raise awareness of Grandparents’ day and bring customers back from retail chains. J20: Redesign the packaging to appeal to an older demographic. Moo: Create a visual representation of ‘Design Work Wonders’ to promote our ethos. Syfy: Get sci-fi fans to love us. Taylors of Harrogate: Create a new coffee innovation. Yorkshire Tea: Design something that will engage our younger customers. Upon scanning the briefs I instantly dismissed itv2 because I don’t like their programming and save the children because I found their working class segregation offensive. To rant a little, my grandma was brought up by her grandma. My great great grandma couldn’t read or write but my grandma passed her 11+, became a fully qualify librarian (which back then required a lot of qualifications) and after getting a degree in it, is looking to do her MA in history. After reading all the briefs thoroughly, I’ve decided to single out J20, Taylors of Harrogate and Yorkshire Tea as potentials. I think it will be hard to get students to come to GAP since people my age tend to associate it with the awful branded hoodies they used to sell. While I’m a fan of Interflora, I do find them quite expensive compared to their retail chain competitors. Moo simply perplexes me that a design company won’t do their own design. I have never watched the Syfy channel so don’t think I would be able to effectively contribute to this. I like J20 and used to drink it all the time, I don’t understand why people would describe it as ‘cheap and chavvy’ and would like to look into that. I think the Taylors of Harrogate would be a nice brief to do with the last brief being coffee related and since I’m from Harrogate I think I would be add a local twist that people from other parts of the country wouldn’t be able to. Finally I quite like Yorkshire Tea but definitely think it appeals to a older, Yorkshire centric population. I also like the fact that just by happenstance they are all beverage related. Upon thoroughly reading the brief I decided to go with J2O as my chose brief.
J2O Brief Background: J2O was born out of Britvic’s historic expertise in juice blending. When it launched in 1998, J2O was a pioneer in the adult soft drinks category, enabling consumers to have a satisfying drink experience that didn’t disappoint when socialising with friends. By expertly blending different fruit juices with their unique aromas, J2O is carefully crafted to create a satisfying and multi-dimensional taste experience. The drink delivers strong, well-rounded flavours that have a velvety, sweet mouth-feel with lingering fruit flavours and a zingy finish. However, despite a strong heritage story around blending, many consumers are not aware that J2O is a blend of two fruits.
Target Audience: 25–35-year-old men and women who love getting together with their friends and family, both in and out of home. They are grown up, confident, have an established social network, and feel relaxed with those around them. They don’t need alcohol to boost their confidence or lower their inhibitions and are happy to interchange between alcohol and soft drinks.
Creative Challenge: As it stands, 40% of J2O consumption is by those aged 16 and under, but we’re wanting to change that. The current artwork design is not seen as ‘adult’ by many; the colours are viewed as bright and childish, and some consumers have even described it as cheap and ‘chavvy’. We’d therefore like you to redesign J2O to appeal to a target audience of 25-35-year-old men and women. The design should make them proud to be seen holding J2O in bars, restaurants and at home, and should bring through J2O’s expressive, unpretentious and playful personality. Designs must be created for both our Orange & Passion Fruit flavour and our Apple & Mango flavour. Please also come up with packaging designs for the 4pk packaging for each of these flavours. You’ll find cutter guide artwork in the Project Pack.
What I Take From This: Britvic is known for its ‘historic expertise in juice blending’ J2O was launched as an adult soft drink. Whilst having a strong heritage story people aren’t aware it’s made of a blend of two fruits. Their target audience is 25-35 year old men and women who are grown up, confident, have an established social network, are happy to interchange between alcohol and soft drinks and proud to be seen holding J2O. However, 40% of J2O’s consumption is by people 16 and under. The colours are viewed as bright and childish, cheap and ‘chavvy’. The rebrand should bring out J2O’s expressive, unpretentious and playful personality and should be for the orange and passion fruit and apple and mango packaging as well as the 4pk packaging.
J2O’s Story and Website
These are various screen shots of the J2O website merged together (as it is a flash style website with scroll activated transitions). I must admit with the bokeh background, the long vertical layout and the miss matched fonts it rather looks like a club promo poster. I guess this goes with the glitter berry branding style but I do think they should either do all the drinks like this or none of them like this. As for the ‘story’ J2O don’t really go into it here as unlike Britvic this subdivision doesn’t really have any history other than the last 17 years so I rather think that them playing the ‘strong heritage story’ card. I feel while they say they are aiming for a more mature market with their use of various fonts, it feels like they’re not really doing that on their website especially with their over use of social media.
Fonts & Resources Montserrat Bold
Museo Slab 500
Ostrich Sans
PT Sans Regular
Neck Cutter
I had a look at the J2O website source code and found they use three fonts in their website (excluding the oneoff ones used on the blend story page. In the YCN brief packet there were additional resources such as a full colour eps. formatted logo with green spot colour. As well as this there were also cutters for the 4pk packaging, body of the bottle and the neck. Whilst this is all very handy, I do think that dictating the size and shape of everything does somewhat restrict designers.
Body Cutter
4pk Cutter
Tabac Slab
Packaging
As show here in the design evolution supplied in the project pack, the brand has gone through a few incarnations in its short lifetime. The new packaging has a bottle that seems taller and subconsciously makes you think there is more than there is. The embossed wave hints at the two mixed flavours. The gradient of the colours throughout the logo add depth to it and helps boost is as a design piece. I like the tame to a sans serif font on the neck label which looks like â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Fortunaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Still not entirely sure however why there is a section taken away from the bottom of the label. J2O was in the beginning an on-trade only drink and to be honest I think moving into off-trade has been their downfall.
Adverts & J2O Late The good people at J2O came up with 3 cocktail recipes in a bid to lift sales of J2O and apparently lifted sales 240% in their trial bars. Whilst raising sales is great I can’t help but think has J2O lost the plot yet again? I am a firm believed in pick what you’re going for and stick to it, if J2O want to be the designated drivers drink then perhaps creating a range of cocktail recipes is not the best idea.
I think one of the most memorable J2O adverts (if not the only anyone ever remembers is the cats and dogs one). Here’s what campaignlive.co.uk had to say about it: “J2O’s new campaign, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, aims to portray the brand as a social soft drink that you can consume while others drink alcohol.The ad attempts to dramatise that J2O can bring harmony to even the most hostile of relationships – the one between cats and dogs. It ends with the line: “A bottleful of togetherness.”” Whilst I enjoy it, particularly the end when the mouse comes in. It’s probably economising on the fact that people love animals. It’s clever don’t get me wrong but I feel it heavily represents the whole ‘bring a bottle’ custom when you go to a party, there goes J2O trying to be alcohol again. Also since it is what I would call a house party, these are usually put on by younger people 16-25 year olds, the exact age group they’re trying to move away from so I don’t know why they would make an advert aimed at them.
Work Of Others Whilst I was looking for J2O I came across people who had done this brief as a University brief at Nottingham Trent. Lekha Nanavati’s design (far left) is simply amazing and I just had to share all of it. She says she was “in short, putting the ‘Oh!’ back into J2O.”I love the inginuity of a concealed flavour for you to blend your self and the little details visible when blended I think it’s brilliant. Fiona Hood’s (left) however caught my attention for all the wrong reasons. It’s colour choise, font choice, bottle choice. It think it looks like something from a really bad old gothic movie. Not in keeping at all, looks awful.
My Thoughts From looking at my J2O research Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve come up with a few things to take forward in my development. Mustnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t alternate young audience. Stylised with alcopops since they came out at the same time. It tends to attract children because they can swig it out the bottle as if it were alcohol. Non alcoholic drinks trying to look alcoholic not appealing to target audience. I have come to the conclusion that J2O can go one of two ways: 1) They decide they want to aim at the older market. They pull these youth themed advertising campaigns and aim for something more grown up, I believe this would require a complete brand and advertising overhaul. 2) They change their minds and stick to the younger audience. In which case only a few things would need updating. I have decided to continue my research and development based on these two ideas.
Current Market Offerings I LOVE THESE DESIGNS!!! The idea of having a front design with a view through to the back to reveal a scene is BEAUTIFUL!!!. I especially like the way Grey Gooseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design has the view through to the back in the shape of a goose.
Bella Vie is an italian wine company, the beautifully intricate decal really in forces there brand. Bella Vie (beautiful life).
Alibi has a lovely simple contemporary design
I ADORE this design, the nautical theme of the rum packaging and the name of the legendary sea monster. I also love the old style design of the bottle.
Current Market Offerings Fentimans’ traditional drinks are lovely bottles with lovely labels. I especially like the way the rose lemonade colour label goes with the colour of the drink in the bottle. The traditional typography is also a good choice.
Folkington’s juices is a lovely packaging, while it is unusual that the label pretty much covers up the entirety of the bottle, the simple illustration of the contents and the beautiful filigree logo are beautiful.
I started off by going to various shops and looking at their drinks that come in glass bottles, admittedly most of them are alcoholic but I don’t think this is such a bad thing since the brief implied people were opting for other drinks in bars etc. than J20. I also included some cans since J20 also comes in can form. There are definitely some themes that run through beverage packaging: • • •
Nautical or product ingredients Traditional old style label or contemporary decal Natural colour schemes
The Belvoir bottles are nice and the colour scheme and typography give a healthy organic vibe. Below that the bottle green brand is a nice example of this, the simple design with the decal is lovely.
Secondary Research
As secondary research I decided to look at Pintrest as I often find they have some very interesting and beautiful examples of design. Here are some of my favourites. All these bottles are beautiful with some traditional and some contemporary elements, all of which are somewhat translucent. (Left) Minimal text but lovely swirly design with beautiful colours and nice label shape. (Bottom) More interesting labels with minimal colours but delightful little illustrations. (Top) Nice textured rainbow geometrical design in a lovely simple bottle. (Right)
Secondary Research
Like the idea of a design on the back and unlike otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s with clear alcohol, you have to drink your way through it to see it. (Top Left) Nice floral decal design. (Bottom Left) Beautiful design and good idea for a band, love the duo tone idea. (Middle Top Left) Lovely bottle and design in a lovely design case. (Middle Bottom Left) The contemporary typography of the brand name somewhat dispel the natural, organic feel the rest of the set up instills, the design is still very nice though. (Top) Simple but in a beautifully crafted holder. Nice idea and design. (Right)
Soft Drinks & Hartridges
Whilst looking for other soft drinks that are in glass bottles I discovered it’s hard to find them, I think this is probably because most images of food and drink online come from shops and their online stores. Personally, I think the decline of the glass bottles came with the death of American Soda Fountain culture in the early ’60s
Whilst looking for glass bottled soft drinks I cam across Hartridges, an old family run brewery and soft drink company. Their ‘h’ range is incredibly similar to J2O, I wonder if they are why J2O changed their logo, I can’t find anything relating the two companies other than an interview with Hartridges managing director, Martin Hartridge, in which he simple mentions Britvic in relation to a question on Hartridges limited range because they are not interested in coming up with knew flavours when you look at companies like Britvic who come up with new flavours but immediately drop them.
Jura Whilst in the current market people are wanting nostalgia, an in depth history and a long back story. J2O can’t really supply that, as much as they like the think they do. Jura is a whiskey company operating off the island of Jura since they rebuilt a derelict distillery in 1963.
Jura or Diùra as it is written in Gaelic, is an island of the Inner Hebrides. It is a mountainous, bare and infertile island largely covered by vast areas of bog. It is believed that the modern name dates back from the Norse-Gael era and is from the Old Norse Dyrøy meaning “beast island”. Evidence of inhabitants on the island go as far back as the mesolithic period (middle stone age). Since then is has occupants such as The Vikings from the 9th to the middle of the 13th Century when it together with Kintyre and Isle of Man were ceded to Scotland in the Treaty of Perth. The descendants of the warlord Somerled then called themselves The Lords of the Isles from the mid 14th Century to the end of the 15th at which point clan rule began. Various clans warred over the island and claimed ownership of it. Every part of clan association didn’t come to an end until 1938 when The Campbell’s sold Jura Hous and the Ardfin Estate. As is unsurprising, the seven estates on Jura are now owned separetly by various bussness tycoons. The Ardfin estate did belong to brewers from Tadcaster until is was bought by and Australian hedge fund manager in 2010. The main settlement on the island is Craighouse which is home to the distillery. It is also home to the island’s only hotel, shop and church.
The Brand Brand Promise (USP) : Being from such a small community Jura Whiskey seems to emphasise a community spirit and being one of the only trades on Jura I think they can emphasise that. As they put it , it if from a place where “whisky is the heart of all” Brand Values : All of these different points do tend to overlap however. The company believes in doing everything to the benefit of the community both literally and honourary. As well as following the traditions of the island whether that be traditional whisky making methods or using celtic symbols on their bottles. Brand Essence (Characteristics) : The company is based around celtic history as seen on the island and in Scotland with most of their whiskeys being associated with a different celtic symbol and most of time it relating to a part of the island of Jura. They are also a big fan of natural flavours and nature as is not surprising living on a fairly isolated island. Less than 200 people have permanent residence on the island compared to the 5000 red deer that inhabit the island. Brand Positioning (Niche/Position in the Market) : They were the head of the alcoholic brand fan club whose example has beeb followed by large companies such as Jack Daniel’s and Glenfiddich. They have what they call The Diurach Programme. When you sign up to there newsletters you are eligible for discount accommodation on Jura, a free dram every month at the Jura pub as well as a free tour of the distillary. They hold events/festivals on the island of which the whiskey is no doubt the main attraction. They are at the top end of whisky prices and often bring up the fact that George Orwell went there to finish 1984 and famously called the island “ungettable” to.
Elixer: The water of Jura has long been believed to possess mystical qualities, owing to a legendary blessing by St Columba nearly 1,500 years ago. The islanders certainly have a history of longevity, with stories of a man who lived to see 180 Christmases in his own home – as an ancient gravestone not far from the Distillery attests. Whether island myth or fact, Diuriachs can certainly control the ageing process when it comes to whisky, so why not drink a drop of Elixir while the night’s still young? Origin: This is where it all started. It’s the whisky that signifies the rebuilding of our community and rebirth of the Jura distillery. On the front of the bottle is a Celtic symbol for birth, beginnings and the forces of nature. It’s something that we added to our unique bottle because we thought it symbolised our unique story, and the whisky that is at the heart of everything we do. Superstition: We’re a superstitious lot on Jura. Aren’t we all? From never cutting peat before May and always building haystacks in a clockwise direction, our superstitions are like stories handed down through the generations. In Superstition, we wanted to produce a wild whisky that’s as rich as our story and a testament to all the intriguing histories around the world, so we’ve added the ancient Ankh cross, a symbol of good luck in the western isles, to the front of the bottle.
It’s wildlife include red deer and birds of prey such as buzzards and various different eagles. Grey seals, otters and adders can also be seen on the island. The isle is made largely of Dalradian quartzite which forms its famous Paps. The Paps consist of three major peaks. Beinn an Òir (mountain of gold), Beinn Shiantaidh (holy mountain) and Beinn a’ Chaolais (mountain of the kyle) standing at 785, 755 and 734 metres respectively. There are also basalt dikes formed during the Lower Tertiary period. The Gulf of Corryvreckan is a narrow straight between Jura and Scarba. The strong atlantic currents and undulating underwater topography conspire to create whirlpools, standing waves and a variety of other surface effects. The Corryvrechan is the third largest whirlpool in the world, the roar of the maellstrom can be heard ten miles. In Scottish mythology the hag goddess of winter, Cailleach Bheur uses the gulf to wash her great plaid and this usher’s in the turn of seasons from autumn to winter. As winter approaches, she uses the gulf as her washtub and it is said the roar of the coming tempest can be heard from as far away as twenty miles, lasting for a period of three days. When she is finished with the washing, the cloth is pure white, and becomes the blanket of snow that covers the land. The Cailleach occupying the whirlpool was described as “the fiercest of the Highland storm kelpies” by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor the famous Scottish writer. This is the kind of lofty heights J2O needs to aim for should they wish to play the historic card.
Primary Market Research I thought another way of gauging public opinion would be a survey. Since I published this on Facebook, the main response is going to be from a small sample and demographic as that is who I am friends with. My typical friend on Facebook is a white British woman aged 16-25 from Northern England. This had diversified somewhat since going to University but not that much.
My results seem to suggest that orange and passionfruit id by far the favourite. It also tends to be drunk when outside of the home but is considered childish and expensive. Many of the people who replied said they’d try a range of cocktail/mocktails made with it but it isn’t their drink of choice when they’re the designated driver. My Godmother and her family run a pub/ restaurant. So I asked her about J2O and this is what I got: They very rarely sell J2O in their bottles. They tend to poor them in glasses rather than supply them in the bottles because people usually have it over ice or as a mixture with soda water or the like. I also asked my local pizzeria and they said: Even though they don’t sell it, they often get people asking for it. This suggests people are more than aware of the brand and willing to ask for by name rather than making their mind up once they get to the bar.
Secondary Market Research I decided to use something learnt in Peter Norris’ business lectures and do a S.W.O.T analysis of J2O.
After my S.W.O.T. analysis I remembered mintel which provides data from market researches. I looked up several reports attaining to this brief including drink packaging trends and soft drink sales.
Strengths • Tastes Good • Variety of Flavours • Recognisable and Well Known (Everyone Knows of J2O) • Suitable for All Ages • Options for people who don’t drink, not just designated drivers but those with religious dietary restrictions etc.
• Thin bottles are preferred to fatter ones by three quarters of drinkers, while 55% prefer tall over shorter ones. This echoes current market trends, where many brands have used a sleek and sophisticated shape to convey a premium positioning.
Weakness • Non Alcoholic Drinks in Bars and Pubs are Hard to Shift • People See it as Childish, Cheap and Chavvy. • People are Embarrassed to Have None Alcoholic Drinks When Everyone Else It. Opportunities • People Can Stand Out and Look Different From the Crowd. • There aren’t Many Non Alcoholic Drinks Available in Clubs and Bars. Threats • Other Soft Drink Companies • Alcohol Brands • Perceived Childishness
• The findings echo current market trends, with men being more likely to prefer square and angular bottles exemplified by Jack Daniels and Disaronno Amaretto, whereas women are more likely to prefer softer shaped bottles such as those used by female-oriented brands such as Tia Maria and Baileys. • Under-35s are significantly more likely than older drinkers to state a preference for shaped bottles, with the older drinkers tending to be relatively apathetic towards packaging, probably due to being more likely to buy drinks based on habits or entrenched preferences. • Nearly nine in ten consumers regularly recycle their drink bottles/cans, becoming an ingrained part of consumers’ everyday lifestyle. • Those aged 18-24 particularly like to try new formats such as drink pouches and over half (52%) of this age group are willing to switch products because of eye-catching packaging. • One third of consumers do not pay any attention to alcoholic drinks packaging, which is particularly the case for 25-34s who have the heaviest brand repertoire of drinks brands. • The premium soft drinks market mainly consists of small, British companies. However, soft drinks giants Coca-Cola(Appletiser) and Britvic (mainly through Amé), have a presence. • SHS-owned Shloer has the greatest market share, followed by Appletiser.
Coca Cola
Coca-Cola recently launched aluminum bottles inspired by the shape of their iconic glass bottle. Other than the visual wow-factor, aluminum bottles have several advantages over glass and plastic. Here are five reasons why they are here to stay: ENERGY SAVING Because these new-age aluminum bottles are lighter and stronger than glass, pallets can be stacked on top of one another. This conserves space and maximizes fuel economy. The aluminum retains its temperature better than glass or plastic, requiring less energy to keep cool. RECYCLING Aluminum bottles are made only from aluminum–even the label design is printed on the surface of the bottle. Glass and plastic bottles have labels and caps that must be sorted out before recycling. BRANDING Bottles–whether glass or aluminum–are generally thought to have a more high-end feel than cans or plastic bottles. Coca-Cola has taken advantage of the cost-effectiveness and versatility of direct bottle printing to create several runs of limited edition branded bottles. These collaborations tap into different niche markets and some have become collectors’ items.
Tempt Cider
Tempt Cider is a lovely and creative design I discovered whilst trawling the internet for interesting drink packages. Here is what one of the designer’s Fie Lindholm says about the concept: “The concept is build on the that cider keeps a secret. You can not smell or taste it but cider is an alchohol. You get tempted by the innocent look, the fruity smell and the refreshing taste. You are too couriuos to avoid a sip and suddenly it´s you that have a secret. Therefore the cider got the name Tempt. The design is characterised by the innocent look at the first glance but by looking closer you will find small secrets and hidden details. The key hole at the back of the bottle hides a link and the line “i have a secret” that will tempt peoples couriousity and lead them to the website where they can post their own and discover other peoples secrets.”
Water Packaging Some suprising packaging I discovered was how intersting water packaging can be. To show support for the McGrath Foundation and raise awareness during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, ‘Mount Franklin’ turned their 750ml Still and Lightly Sparkling glass bottles into works of art with collaboration from Australian jewellery designer Samantha Wills and her illustrator Kelly Smith of ‘Birdy & Me’. The ‘United we stand’ campaign is all about celebrating strong women experiencing breast cancer. We created a range of glass bottles and labels wrapped in bold pattern prints inspired by epaulettes shapes for strength and delicate pencil illustrations of the warrioress for a human caring side. ‘Mount Franklin’ is donating $250,000 to the McGrath Foundation in 2014.
“Fill Forever” is a reusable, eco friendly, fully recyclable, and light weight water bottle. It was created to be offered by EPAL, the public water supplier in Portugal, to promote the consumption of tap water everywhere, and not just indoors. Its iconic and exclusive shape is inspired by a water cascade, it’s extremely ergonomic and all the design details were given careful attention to optimize the resources and energy used in its production. The 500 ml bottle, made of PET, a 100% recyclable material, weighs only 27.5 grams, and uses a manufacturing process that consumes much less energy when compared to glass or aluminium, materials that are often used to produce reusable bottles. The cap, made of HDPE, was also fully optimised and weighs only 1.25 grams, allowing the creation (of one) of the lightest reusable water bottles on the market. The new water bottle was launched, by EPAL, during the World Water Congress, the biggest international water sector event, with more than 5000 people.
Water Packaging Natural Mineral Water Aqua Monaco is not only of special origin but also shows a challenging branding. The glacier water’s source is situated in the “Münchner Schotterebene” which makes it a real Munich product. The world famous Munich beers use the same water which is more than 10.000 years old and a left over from the last huge glaciers. Aqua Monaco is captured pure and clean in over 150 meters under ground. Premium water quality and outstanding design make the cheerful 0,33 liter Aqua Monaco longneck bottle a perfect drink for clubs, bars and delis in Munich and around the world. Aqua Monaco is happily playing with stereotypes without forgetting to honour the region of its origin. The labels are set up in an ever changing grid system of information, graphics and images. The rich imagery shows the mixed up bavarian-munich-monaco-water-beautydream-happy world of Aqua Monaco. Harrogate Spring Water has the kind of historic story J2O wish it had, with the springs discovered and used for their ‘healing’ properties since 1571, it’s always good to see my local brand whenever I venture further afield. I like their move from a Serif font and embossed people doing cartwheels or what have you to a geometric design and a historic looking sans serif font was definitely the way to go.
I think this appeals to the kind of audience J2O want to aim for, no one would be embarrassed to drink water from any of these bottles. The Icelandic Glacier Water is essentially an evian bottle with more embossing. I think it looks good though and I like the use of font and an image of Iceland. The fill forever bottle is simple and beautiful, enough said. Finally, not sure how I feel about the Aqua Monaco, the bright colours and layout of the label kind of remind me of when you got fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. The new Harrogate bottles are lovely with their geometric design but then again, coming from Harrogate I’m biased.
A complete brand identity, label and carton design for Icelandic Glacial Water. The cool thing about this project is we had the opportunity to rebrand Icelandic Glacial at the same time we did the packaging, so it was a truly holistic effort. The other great thing about this was that we worked directly with the two principals of the company, Jon and Kristian Olaffson, who, no surprise are from Iceland. As you’d guess with it’s namesake, this brand is all about Iceland and the core of our brief was to ensure this was baked into the DNA of the work. The label is based on the shape of Iceland and is literally a window to the icy topography of the country. The source of Icelandic Glacial™ is Iceland’s legendary Ölfus Spring, a naturally replenished catchment zone formed during a massive volcanic eruption more than 5,000 years ago.
Other Packaging
This is a random collection of the different bottle designs Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve found whilst looking around the internet.
Other Packaging
Absolut I thought I’d also look at the new Absolut bottles as they’re beautiful and each flavour is individual. The brief Our brief was to create a visual flavour family built on the creative heritage of Absolut and its ground-breaking collaborations with innovative artists in the contemporary art world. The Absolut Flavours range was to be designed to appeal directly at a group we came to identify as ‘Urban Creative Millenials’. What we did Category thinking says that a fruitflavored vodka requires a picture of the fruit on the bottle. We wanted to break that convention. Instead, we reached into the symbolism and myths tied to the ingredients to find each flavour’s core essence – and then we amplified that essence through art. Our interpretations of the flavors were designed without the use of computers, but with the use of traditional design and craftsmanship tools – pens, paper, crayons, paint and brushes. With Absolut Apeach, for example, soft pastels and a light hand-drawn gesture were used to capture the fruit’s evanescent, sweet fragility and convey a sense of romance. The design for Absolut Pears began with the fruit’s symbolic association with longevity and purity, and arrived at an abstract pear shape resembling the symbol for eternity. For Absolut Raspberri, the emotion of love and passion is intensified through the abstract expressionist technique of throwing paint. The same artistic process was repeated across the range. The impact “This is one of the most dramatic changes we’ve ever made, and our biggest and most transformative design project ever. Our goal was to give our customers distinctive designs that are unlike anything one has ever seen. Vibrant, captivating bottles that bring energy to any occasion and celebrate the fact that every flavour in the Absolut Vodka range is something extraordinary. The standard thinking says a fruit-flavoured vodka requires fruit imagery. We wanted to break that convention.” Anna Kamjou, Global Design Director at The Absolut Company.
B&B Studio
B&B studio was founded in 2009 and is now based in East London. They specialise in branding and packaging design. They have one a multitude of awards in their design adventures. Groundbreaking work relies on collaborative clients. We seek out relationships with brand owners who love their product and believe in the power of design, because chemistry inspires creativity. -B&B studio They have a vast number of favourable reviews, this is my favourite from the founder of the innocent brand. The B&B team always hit home runs. They manage to deliver creative excellence while remaining business friendly. You will love both the experience and the results of working with them. -Richard Reed I especially like their Slamseyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gin designs.
Initial Ideas In my quest to fulfil the brief, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve decided to go for the brief as if it were without certain restriction and then dial it back to fit the criteria. I think this is a good idea because sticking to rules can often restrict your creativity more than is necessary so this is what I will do. For a younger audience I thought using something such as bokeh like that found on the website is a simple but an effective way of adding depth. As you can see I have added them to these little mock-up bottles I created in Illustrator and Photoshop. I also created your bog standard hipster triangle design and added various overlays as can be seen middle bottle left and pack design right.
Label Development
I used the idea of a triangular pattern and the gradient from the supplied logo as well as the body cutter pack to create a mock up. I created it with and without green shadow, as well as with and without green â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;2â&#x20AC;&#x2122;. I then cut out some of the triangles that were similar in colour to that of the drink thus allowing itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colour to show through. I also did this with a plain gradient. I then decided to revert to my original idea and draw something resembling vines showing the two fruits used in the drink and altered the gradient for some contrast.
Label Development
I then used these vine like designs to add to the neck labels where I altered the gradient but kept the text relitivly the same, before adding it all onto my mock up bottles. I also changed the bottle caps so they manched the dominant colour in each design.
Above is my final outcome for the orange & passionfruit flavour. I then altered this slightly and experimented until I was happy with the Apple & Mango design (Bottom Right).