Niki Bosemberg GR 620 Visual Thinking Summer 2019
Waste Not A project on sustainable consumption Objective
We can all learn to have a positive impact on our environment through our daily habits and behaviors.
Developing a concept Creative Brief Personas Moodboard Logo Annotated Visual System
Research on sustainable consumption led to establishing the project’s goals, audience, and design solutions. The creative brief explains the background, target audience and the personas to represent them, objectives, and the design solutions to help reach those objectives. Chosen keywords led to moodboards that helped explore visual possibilities for the designs. Those were refined to create one look and feel; the logo was developed to solidify the brand; and the annotated visual system outlines the graphic and aesthetic rules the project will follow because of this process.
Creative Brief Why? For whom? How?
Background
Target Audience
Objective
Bad Habits
Decision-makers [Humans 16-60]
Good Habits
>> Personas
We can all learn to have a positive impact on our environment through our daily habits and behaviors.
The way humans live right now is not sustainable, as the planet and its resources are finite. There is not enough awareness in our society of how much impact each of us has on our environment. If you’re lucky, your city is set up for recycling and composting, and maybe you do what you can there. But maybe you don’t know how to recycle, and maybe you don’t have access to composting. Or maybe you don’t even know why those systems are important. Sustainability is “meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Anyone old enough to make decisions about how and when and what they consume needs to know the consequences of their behavior. If they plan on being on the planet for at least 20 more years or care about the next generation, they should be even more concerned. [Three people spanning the range of our target audience to keep our goals clear]
Jackson is just starting to learn about
what he can do for the world as he grows up. He wants to do the right thing, but isn’t too willing to change his lifestyle.
Linda is thinking long term for her chil-
dren’s future and the world in which they will grow up. She’s old enough to have seen the world change and knows it’s in trouble, but also knows she can have an impact.
Cassie wants to live more conscientiously
now that she’s starting to feel like a responsible adult and is looking to act accordingly. She wants to learn more about how to help the planet.
If you learn how important your daily behaviors are to the environment and the effect you can have on the planet as an individual, you’ll realize the changes you need to make in your life and that if everyone did the same, you could change the future.
Persona 1 • Newly independent
Persona 2 • Trying to push for more
Persona 3 • Wannabe green butterfly
Jackson
Linda
Cassie
Age 18
Age 45
Age 32
Ethnicity African-American
Ethnicity Caucasian
Ethnicity Hispanic
Life Stage Student
Life Stage Working Mom
Life Stage Young Professional
• He recently moved out of his parents’ home and doesn’t even know how to recycle properly but knows it’s important.
• She has always done basic recycling at home with her kids but is now thinking that’s not enough and she wants to do more to save the planet for her children’s future.
• He’s in a college dorm and doesn’t have easy access to sorting trash cans unless he takes his garbage all the way to the dining hall.
• They have a yard and a garden and she likes to plant flowers and veggies to teach her kids about nature and good food.
• When he lived at home, his mom made sure the recycling was taken care of so he doesn’t know exactly how it works or what can and can’t be recycled.
• Her suburb doesn’t have composting but she has composting worm bins in her yard and uses them to fertilize the garden.
• He’s a student with a part-time job and a social life. He lives out of his backpack, carrying snacks, gym clothes, a water bottle, and all his electronic basics and chargers, because he’s on the go a lot.
• She co-owns a casual eatery in the city and is looking to make her business more environmentally friendly.
• He likes to have food with him, often packing zip top baggies of cookies or crackers. He takes food to go most mornings on his way to class and tosses the receptacles in the trash after. • He knows that the current situation with climate change is bad and feels some resentment towards his parents’ and grandparents’ generation for letting it get this way. • He’s hesitant about getting involved in environmental issues because he doesn’t think there’s much he can do. He’s just one kid.
• She’s made the switch to having only paper straws and only upon request, and including compost by the trash cans, even though it’s more work for the staff and they have to be emptied more often. She also eliminated plastic containers for leftovers and to-go orders. • She’s looking for other ways to go green at work, and also hoping customers will appreciate the effort the restaurant is making. • She knows it’s important to for everyone to do their part for the environment and realizes that businesses can have a bigger impact and even encourage patrons to do the same.
• She’s always cared about the environment and recycled as best she could, but now she’s interested in doing more and is trying to learn to live more sustainably because she’s worried that the EPA has basically ceased to exist under the current administration. • Her city has composting as well as recycling infrastructure and she separates all her trash at home because she wants to send less garbage to a landfill. • She works in a marketing agency and as of recently finally has a disposable income, which she spends largely on clothes and social outings. • She gets iced coffee nearly every afternoon. She packs her lunch for work regularly but usually in disposable containers with disposable cutlery. • She’s aware that there are better, more eco-friendly alternatives for some of her habits but hasn’t spent the time researching how to make her routine more in-line with her values. • She encouraged her office manager to implement better in-office recycling because she thought it would be a good way to have greater impact, and her coworkers were enthusiastic about participating in the trash-sorting. • She’s started researching which clothing brands are more environmentally conscientious and stopped shopping fast fashion brands because she saw a report about the negative impact of their production and factory conditions.
Creative Brief continued With what? How?
Deliverables
Keywords
Poster series
Recycled/recyclable means eco-friendly and conscien-
The posters serve to guide people to the website.
Website
The website should have articles that are informative and always a call to action, as well as teach about eco-friendly alternatives to products and a discussion forum to create a community of environmentalist folks.
App
Resources from site plus help locating greener businesses nearby, like restaurants that support plastic-free habits or the best thrift shops in the area, as well as personal green action tackers.
Packaging
Shipping boxes that teach about sustainability, they have to catch the eye of the user.
tious. Physical materials used should be few and have minimal impact. They should also be chosen with their entire life cycle in mind.
Back-to-basics means plain and easy to understand. Simpler design and simpler living would benefit us all.
Re-define means we need to realize how big our impact is and how small changes can make a difference.
Moodboards Early iterations
Back-to-basics
Recycled/recyclable
Re-define
Final Moodboard: Back-to-basics Collected tidbits for inspiration art type
layout type
objective photography
situational photography
color/texture/graphic elements
Logo and wordmark Early ideas for the logo revolved around echoing the shapes of the letters W and N, or alluding to recycling containers with their shapes. Despite the evolution away from those concepts, the colors first proposed ended up inspiring the final color palette of the project.
Logo and wordmark Process and early iterations
aste ot
WN W N aste aste W W Wot ot N N Wotaste aste ot
Logo and wordmark Final
Logo and wordmark Variations for use of final version
Annotated Visual System Rules
TYPEFACES
Avenir
Serifa
IMAGERY/GRAPHIC ELEMENTS
COLORS PMS 123 C R: 253 G: 185 B: 19
PMS 534 C R: 0 G: 53 B: 78
PMS 2152 C R: 27 G: 100 B: 134
PMS 341 C R: 0 G: 120 B: 78
PMS 357 C R: 35 G: 90 B: 46
C: 0 M: 30 Y: 100 K: 0
• • •
Brown, recycled paper Rectangles and lines at 45˚ Photos of sustainable items and practices
C: 100 M: 75 Y: 45 K: 40
C: 90 M: 55 Y: 30 K: 10
C: 90 M: 30 Y: 85 K: 15
C: 85 M: 40 Y: 100 K: 35
• The look and feel of recycled, used materials, like crumpled paper will contrast well with the bright colors. • The colors are inspired by the trash and recycling code but chosen in richer, more sophisticated tones, to bring the brand forward and make it more upscale. • The geometric forms of the graphic elements contrast with the curves and the logo and wordmark. The wordmark can be used in any of the colors in the system, so as to make it clear and have it contrast with the background color. • The photos used show the sustainable practices the brand teaches and encourages.
Designing solutions Posters Website Mobile app Packaging
With the concept and rules set, design of deliverables began. The posters set the tone established in the creative brief and visual system. The website and app followed suit on screen. And finally, shipping boxes for products sold on the site and reusable cotton bags with the Waste Not brand.
Posters The poster trio was based off the classic “reduce, reuse, recycle” motto and it was important that the design be captivating. The posters themselves would be many people’s first encounter with the brand and the information on them should lead a curious audience to the website.
Posters
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Poster series evolution
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6
Round 7
Final Posters
Website The website is meant to educate people about sustainable practices, as well as sell products to help them maintain those good habits. Early iterations focused on a recycled look and were too busy. The final version has more negative space and a cleaner look.
Website
Website Previous iterations
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Website Home page
Website Article without image
Website Article with image
Website Resources page
Mobile App The mobile app brings the information from the website onto a portable screen, but also includes features meant to be used on the go, such as trackers of daily plastic usage.
Mobile App
Mobile App Previous iterations Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Mobile App Map
TODAY
Swipe
through
Mobile App
M
M
Final version
App icon
Opening screen
ot te N Was
Mobile App
M
M
TODAY leads to Trending,
Featured,
and News, swiping through each.
M App icon
Mobile App
M
M
Profile button leads to
My Account, and personal features
such as Trackers.
Packaging The initial idea was to design beautiful boxes in which customers would receive items purchased from Waste Not. The boxes could be reused for shipping or storage, or simply recycled. The website shop would sell reusable items that replace single-use junk, such as stainless steel straws or bamboo cutlery, and of course bags. The idea grew to include reusable cotton tote bags with the Waste Not brand that could be used for grocery shopping, carrying extra things on the commute, or any other use you’d have for a plastic bag. All the designs use the rectangles and lines and the colors established in the visual system. The logo also becomes an important element in the bags, while the boxes are more informative, like the posters.
Packaging Tote bags
Packaging Tote bags
Packaging Previous iterations of boxes and bags
Packaging Shipping boxes
Packaging Shipping boxes
Packaging Shipping boxes
Closing
Sustainable consumption is an extremely vast subject matter and this project barely scratches the surface of can and needs to be done to preserve the Earth. Waste Not seeks to inspire and to empower individuals to push for more, for better options, for a greener future.