Activity One - Blog Post #2

We’ve Got Colour

So with a chosen logo to work with, I now have to figure out colour. I know these posts have been a little bit long-winded but bear with me here, typing all this out is helping me think as well. 

When working with colour, it’s important to think about emotions you’re trying to get across as well as what your audience is. Since my audience is the community, I want to use colours that are welcoming and friendly.

I started by collecting some colours that I like. I usually do this by looking at other work I’ve done and picking from photos that fit the mood of the project.

Lately, I’ve been really into softer, bright colours. 

These are some of the colour combos that I played with for this project but ultimately, I’ve ended up on the pale yellow, red and blue. They’re a softer take on a fully saturated primary palette. I may use the light pink as well later in some pattern work. 

Yellow = optimism, happiness, enthusiasm, hope red = passion, love, fire, determination blue = sea, sky, confidence, calm

We were asked to think about where we’d be in 5-10 years and what we’d like to be doing. This is a good tool for portfolio work because it can help guide what you want others to get out of it.

My Vision:

I want to be changing the world in a positive way through design.

Steps:

Work full time at Common Foundry and develop my design skills.

Create work for clients and passion projects for myself that is effective.

Involve myself in the community and take initiative.

Create every single day and travel often, meet new people, learn, grow, adapt and problem solve as best I can. 

Case Study Draft

Project Title Balanced.

Class Name Design Research Project

Date of Completion 11/29/2019

My Role Art Director

Summary Balanced. is an organization focused on promoting a healthy work/life balance that I designed in the final year of my degree. It is an integrated ecosystem focused on providing a healthier schedule for those that tend to overwork themselves.

Project Challenge

Possible header photo: Waving/animated Ish with the balanced. logo Overwork is dangerous for not only your mental health but your physical health as well. working more than 55 hours a week raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. At this point in time, overworking yourself can officially be a cause of death. Something needs to be done. The challenge lies in ‘What’ and ‘How’? How do we change the way a whole society perceives work/life balance in an appealing way, especially when the target audience is most likely too busy to go through and set up a whole system?

Strategy/Methodology Show pic of Ish

Using myself and my own experiences as a key target audience, I realized that the most important aspect of Balanced. had to be a simple entry point. A simple voice command system in the form of a smart speaker program would be necessary and from there, the rest flowed. The system would be wrapped around the central character of a little AI robot named Ish. 

Ish can be likened to a little assistant that lives inside the user’s phone. It helps plan the user’s day, sends messages to ask how the user is feeling, sends the user on forced breaks and is the face of the Balanced system.

Show Ish screens

Design Process Identification Conceptualization Ideation Show ideation/drafts of Ish Show logo ideation (sketches and final)

brand ideation Production Revision & Feedback Deliverables

Solution/Contribution Show images of the completed booklet, al stages of the ecosystem Balanced has been developed to become a foil that fits snugly around the user’s life. At the beginning of integration, Balanced studies the user’s day to day activities using the deliverables that will be described in the coming pages.

This sounds like a lot, but Balanced knows that not everyone has the time to set a whole system up, so it has been designed with the intention of ease of access. Balanced will bring awareness to the issue of overwork and what it does to an individual’s mental and physical health. It will impact the way that people value their time and themselves as a person and deconstruct the idea that overworking oneself is admirable.

Balanced is an app, a smart speaker, a website, a watch integration, a friend, a secretary and a resource.  Takeaways - This project taught me a lot about the design process from start to finish and also showed me that everything starts from a poor looking sketch but end well depending on the amount of effort and skill you put in.

PROJECT ONE RATIONALE - BLOG POST #9

Project 1 - Environmental Redesign Rationale

ARTG371 - Sara Holmes

Product: Tsubazo Pairing Knife

Project Description: For this project, the goal was to find an overly packaged item and redesign it to create something more environmentally friendly. We were allowed to choose anything we deemed to be overpackaged, even if the packaging seemed alright. My goal was to create a package that could be used again, either as individual components or as one piece. I wanted to make sure that any waste from the project was one hundred percent recyclable. I also wanted to create a package that turned a simple pairing knife into a beautiful gift to be opened.

Environmental Considerations: When walking down the aisle of any store, it is unlikely that you will see more than a couple of packages with no plastic involved. Since the invention of plastic, it has been involved in packaging whether that has been as a plastic sleeve, bubble wrap, slips of plastic, etc. Even if it is made reusable (hard plastic), most of it ends up at the dump where it will take hundreds of years to break down completely. 

I wanted to create a simple enough package that could be completely reused, and if the person has no interest in reusing it, it could decompose naturally. For this project, I used the following:

Scrap Wood - 13 years to decompose.

Wood Glue - 1-3 years. Breaks down over a period of time when exposed to moisture. 

Cloth - 1-5 months to decompose.

Thread - 3-4 months to decompose.

Tracing paper - 1-4 weeks to decompose, could also be reused to wrap a gift, jot down notes, or even as tracing paper!

Recycled paper - 2-6 weeks to decompose. 

While a bit more effort is put into the packaging because of this, my audience could comfortably buy this product without worry of what to do with the package upon opening. The box could be reused to hold paint brushes, pencils, another gift, or even the knife. 

Design Concept and Solutions: 

My goal was to create a package for the product that could do a better job of representing the product inside. I wanted to completely eradicate the use of plastic, make a package that created less of an impact on the environment and was beautiful for the user to look at as well as. The original package that was cardboard and plastic and I did not think that it matched the quality of the product inside, a Japanese pairing knife.

The purpose of the item inside is to be used as an everyday knife for cutting up vegetables and fruit. My goal was to create a package that reflected the rich culture and heritage of the country that it was made in. I wanted to wow the user and make something that they would be inclined to reuse and if not, know with certainty that they could recycle it.

I began by looking at Japanese knives, the beautiful simplicity to the hilt matched with the rich texture of the blade. So much beauty deserved something more. I remembered reading about Japanese joinery a while ago and after reading up about it again, the idea came to me that I should make a box for the blade and use no nails. It would be better for the environment and would reflect Japan. 

I decided that I wanted my audience to be a culinary student or a professional in the industry. I wanted to create something that would give that person absolute joy to open. The idea was that I wanted the person opening it to have the same emotion a design student down when opening their MacBook packaging up for the first time. That feeling of excitement while opening up the layers of the box to reveal the item inside is what I wanted to promote.

Considerations:

Heritage - Japan has a very rich heritage and I wanted to make sure that the design was to that standard.

Environmental - The package should be simple but elegant, easily recycled.

Colour - Japan’s flag is a beautiful shade of red and the initial packaging makes attempts at that.

Typography - Japanese design loves geometrical sans-serifs.

Experience - This should be an exceptional experience for a culinary student.

Using these considerations, I applied myself to this redesign and my goal, which never changed during the entirety of this redesign.

I was planning to seal the box closed with a wax seal to give a sense of elegance. However, someone pointed out to me that this would leave a stain on the box. I also realized as I stood there with it in my hands, that a wax seal was too much, which is why I decided to wrap it in tracing paper instead. A great thing about the tracing paper is the auditory sensation of unwrapping it and the relation it has to actually receive a gift from someone. Suddenly, without me having to nudge anyone into thinking so, the package actually did look like a gift while keeping the box below visible. 

I also considered placing a seal anyway on the paper wrap but decided I loved the simple elegance of the wrap alone. Sometimes, even if you think you have a concrete plan, when it comes to the creation side they fall to the wayside. That is why creating a prototype is so important.  

Initially, I also had lofty plans for painting a beautiful scene on the lid of the box. However, during our feedback week, I had a lot of the students tell me that they loved how simple the box was, that the concept even reminded them of home. One of the girls told me that she was studying in Canada because she wanted to buy and sell products and she would definitely want to sell my product in Japan!

I was pretty attached to the idea of painting, but you learn a lot in design as you go through and build products, that sometimes it’s best to kill your darlings. Getting attached to one concept is a bad idea.

I found instead that I could create a colour pop by taking the wine red from the Japanese flag on the paper wrap and matching it to a fabric, which I then sewed into a handkerchief with the help of my mother and sister. I proudly did the inside seam and ironed it, but when the time came to sew the top, my sister, with her costuming diploma, stepped in for me. 

The end result is a beautiful, simple yet elegant gift. When opening, the user has to first slide off the paper wrap, open the tracing paper, slide back the lid and then finally unfold the handkerchief to reveal the blade inside, safely nestled within the fabric to keep it from moving while in transit.

Day Five - Blog Post #6

Today we got started on redesigning a package of our choice. It’s a project I was kind of looking forward to since I first saw my friends working on it two years ago!

I had two packages I wanted to work on at the start of conceptualizing. One of them was an easy choice, an over packaged, instant matcha tea satchet, four box extra, plastic wrapped disaster. 

The other, was a beautiful knife pushed inside a plastic cage.

Though I knew which one would be easiest for me, something about the knife called to me. I started to paint pictures in my head of what my package could be and I knew, in the end, that was the one that I wanted to do. 

I have started ideating and drawing thumbs but I think I know what I’m heading towards. I want my audience to really enjoy their experience of opening the package to reveal their tool, in the same excited way that a graphic designer might unwrap their gorgeous apple packaging to reveal a macbook. 

To a culinary student or worker, a pairing knife is the ultimate tool, like the macbook is to the graphic designer. Both are equally important, both give the same delight and ease of use.

The Rise of Design Thinking in Meetings and Events

I really enjoyed the relevancy of this reading for this class and felt that although it uses some industry-specific language it is still accessible. It seems like such a simple concept to ‘design from the attendees’ perspective’ but it also et like a ‘eureka moment’ to read that phrase. I think that in the past, many events have been designed specifically with the organizers perspective and it feels like designing for attendees is just common sense. What better way to use a people-oriented method like design-thinking?

Opportunity, Formulate, Build and Debrief

It’s easy to fall deeply into the design aspect of our grad show because that is the primary focus, displaying our work, but I think this reading has an excellent point about involving the attendees to keep their focus. There’s the yearning to want to make a whole new experience and refresh the Design grad show but there’s also the need to work with the space (and items in that space) that we have. We want the attendees to feel welcome but not overwhelmed, and we want to make sure that everyone involved is getting the same amount of attention to detail and care as everyone else because all attendee’s motivations for being there are different and in the case of our event, they’re most likely there to support one or two students in particular. 

“Consciously think about event design from the user perspective.” I think that our focus for the grad show, now that we’ve obtained a speaker and location, is to really focus on wayfinding and hammer out how we want to display our work in a way that does the work justice. We need to map out the floorplan in a way that prioritizes the attendee’s experience and can maybe be interactive.

I’m wondering what might be a good way to make our show a bit interactive? We were thinking about creating a walk through an area of our work that would require the attendee moving through all of it, sort of like a museum floor, but even better could be printed objects they can pick up and touch or digital screens that they can swipe through.

I think we have many opportunities here and after this reading, I’m feeling inspired.

Refined Rationales Blog Post #5B

Project Title: The Nav

The Nav is a unique project because it undergoes a visual identity change yearly. The challenge lies in creating new energy for the student-led press while keeping it recognizable as The Nav but it is also an opportunity to push myself as a design student and push the boundaries. This year I had the task of redesigning my own design from the previous year. The goal was to reign it in and give it a cleaner look from last year while maintaining the distinct personality within. I also needed to make sure that the layout was simple enough that a team of three could ay the 40 page magazine out in one day. 

Project Title: Balanced

Overwork is a worldwide social stigma that promotes an unhealthy lifestyle. Through this project, I wanted to work on a solution for people who lead an unbalanced life by giving them tools to change their relationship with work. The challenge lay in creating something usable that could be integrated easily into a busy lifestyle. I decided to create a scheduling app that would guide users to make healthier choices through education on mental health and forced rests. To this end, I designed a smart ecosystem that learns and adapts to the user through use. 

Project Title: Fox & Koi

Last year, I realized that I needed a way to reconnect with my passion for graphic design and push myself to create outside of classwork. I’ve always loved enamel pins and so along with a business partner, I began an enamel pin shop. There’s a lot that goes into a pin from conception to iteration and the final physical object. Through Fox & Koi I’ve not only worked on my illustration skills but my business skills as well. I run the business side of fox & koi. I speak to the manufacturers, find new manufacturers, coordinate locations and markets for selling the pins, create the websites, package the pins, do the marketing and I also design pins, stickers and prints.

Let’s Take a Sec Here

So last week, I took my hundred thumbs and whittled them down to three choices. Those three choices didn’t really feel that great so I started working on more thumbs but found that throughout them, I was fixated on geometry. I was drawing cubes, cones, triangles and a lot of circles. I thought that was maybe just me doodling mindlessly.

Perhaps it was or maybe it was my brain compartmentalizing my thinking, literally putting my thoughts into boxes to be taken off the shelf and stacked up later until I had the semblance of a thing. Design, in all of its facets, can be boiled down to one thing: making things. Sometimes our brains make in chunks first and we work so closely with those chunks that we don’t realize there’s a whole big picture we’ve missed until someone else points out what’s been right under your nose all along. 

Last week my prof took my circle design and asked me why I didn’t just continue with that, but with a whole line of slightly wobbly geometry. I want to show you my emotions about that through this excellent clown illustration above by @nerimative on instagram. 

As you can see, it perfectly displays the feeling within when one performs the blunder described by my oma as ‘looking with your nose instead of your eyes’.

Anyway, back to it.

DAY TWELVE - BLOG POST #14

Bet you weren’t expecting this!

I know that last week I was pretty hung up on my box with the spout idea, but after taking a look at the notes I’d taken at our first meeting with our client, I realized that one of the things she’d said was a dream package for her, was a package with as little packaging as possible. 

This is still a little bit indulgent by having the paper wrap, but I don’t think I went overboard. The wrap is one piece of paper that wraps around the granola, which helps it stand up on the shelf and also gives the granola a handy little carrier handle for those juiced up yogi’s on the go! I think the design is playful enough that it looks cute but can also appeal to all genders. 

After talking to the client today though, I found out that I’d accidentally designed my package.....for ants! This package needs to be at least 1.5x the size for the amount of granola that needs to fit. This isn’t a bad thing though, that will allow me to make my font bigger and give me more room to play as well. I’m excited to plan this out again!

Things to note: 

Add ‘crunchy’, ‘raw’ and ‘dehydrated’ to the front. 

‘Not Your Average Granola’ or ‘Superfood Granola’

3 flavours based on juices

supergreens -> green 

ladyluxe -> pink

 nut milk -> milk chocolate -> tan/bran/bronze/compliments chocolate (quick fix bottle colour to light tan) 

That’s all for now!

Day Eight - Blog Post #10

Coombs Country Market Field Trip

We went on a field trip to Coombs today to visit their grocery store. Coombs has a lot of really neat packages in their store because they sell items that come from all over the world! There were beautiful Balsamic bottles, chocolate bars, yoghurt packages and so much more! However, we were there with a simple enough goal and I wasn’t to get distracted, although in the end, it happened. We can blame the edible glitter and handmade paper for that!

Anyway, the goal was to find two sets of a package series that we could draw inspiration from and use as an example for our next project. We’re supposed to design a box for Granola for this delicious, local-based fresh juice company.

Series #1: Fee Brothers Bitters

How is the branding consistent across all of the packages?

While the brand’s colour changes, the layout of the packages remains consistent. The type, logo, paper and sticker along the top are all the same. The only thing that changes in fact, is the colour. Even then, the colours are in the same tones. Even with just a quick glance at the shelf, someone could register that they’re a series.

How does the design differentiate amongst “flavours”?  

The design does not differ much, the only thing I did find is that on some of the bottles, the lid had a different colour to denote flavour as well. However, this wasn’t completely consistent so it was hard to say what it meant completely, which was a small issue in the concept overall.

What is the brand concept?  

The concept for this brand seems to be higher end and meant to make the audience feel like it is an old-fashioned product. It is wrapped in paper to give it this illusion of being vintage and the sticker that runs around the top displays the portraits of what one must assume are the Fee Brothers. What’s fun about is that you can’t see the liquid inside until you open and unwrap the bottle, giving it the feeling of something you might be able to present as a gift.

Other thoughts?

I’m kind of curious to see what the bottle looks like underneath the paper and was seriously considering buying a bottle just to check. It’d be cool if this product was so easily recycled by just removing the label and bringing the glass in! While I want to create something consistent, I also want to make sure that I focus on the environment. I’m already thinking about what I might do to make the package sustainable and within my client’s budget. I like the idea of glass.

Series #2: Whittaker’s Chocolate.

How is the branding consistent across all of the packages?

Whittakers is a really neat brand because while there are a lot of flavours, the Whittakers chocolate brand is unmistakable. I first came across it in New Zealand, where it is manufactured and proudly second only after Cadbury chocolate. Every single package is a beautiful shade of gold in a paper wrap and when opened, another foil wrap of gold protects the chocolate inside. The branding remains consistent by keeping the logo at the top of the package, followed by the chocolate information and name.

How does the design differentiate amongst “flavours”?  

There is always a block of chocolate at the bottom but it is always illustrated with the correct flavour profile per package. Each flavour also has a unique font colour. Otherwise, the rest of the package remains the same.

What is the brand concept?  

The concept for the brand is definitely meant to be luxurious, denoted by the gold wrap colour. The font tells us that it is also meant to be old-fashioned. Knowing New Zealand, I know how proud they are of their heritage and this chocolate is meant to draw on that. The user should feel that when they are picking up this block at the grocery store, they feel like they’re in a lovely old candy shop.

Other thoughts?

I was wondering if I was drawn to this series because of the nostalgia I felt when looking at it, you can’t count on one hand the amount of these bars I got through when I lived there! However, you can tell just by the image that this is a really strong series. There is no question that they are linked and I think the key to that is only changing a small part of the package to reflect the different flavours. The goal is definitely to have the user know without question that the two separate items that they are holding are linked.