Rob Banham and Mattew Lickiss joined us in one of our feedback sessions. Our feedback sessions are dedicated to helping students get additional feedback from tutors on a particular project of theirs. We had part 3 students sharing their work on their magazine designs as well as their packaging.
Year: 2021
Longhaul sports fuels packaging design
Overview
Longhaul is a growing brand which specialises in creating prolonged energy release food for athletes. Owners Staale Brinchmann and Amelia Watts found a gap in the market for savoury foods as other brands in the market have focused on sweet flavours. Our project – undertook by myself, Alex Ganczarski, Ro Dicker and Liselot van Veen – consisted of redesigning food pouches for their 4 existing flavours, creating a template that could easily be adapted to more flavours in the future.
Restating our brief
When this Real Job was advertised to us, we were expecting to provide an update of their logo and tag-line design, pouch designs for 4-6 flavours and advertising graphics and templates. However, after communicating with our client it became clear that they were happy with their existing logo design, but wanted to rework the tagline and intended to use the pouch designs themselves as advertisement to present on their social media platforms. Thus, our tasks became:
- Rework the tag-line
- Create an adaptable template for their food pouches, presenting completed examples for their 2 flavours currently on the market, as well as examples without the full copy for 2 flavours that are currently in the testing phase
As a result, the job was a lot smaller than we anticipated. We used this to our advantage as it meant all 4 of us could work together to bring a broad range of pouch design ideas forward for our client.
Understanding the market
A few of our client’s closest competitors are Clif, Tribe and Science in Sport. Staale identified that Tribe’s branding aligned with the way he envisioned Longhaul’s branding, with its vibrant landscapes and sense of being outdoors. This provided us with the challenge of drawing inspiration from Tribe, while standing out on a shelf with its own identity. Our client was also very keen to not include any images of food, an aspect with bothered them about their existing pouch designs. This encouraged us to think outside of the box. While looking at these competitors we noticed a few trends; the name of the brand being highest in the design’s hierarchy, the use of bright colours to stand out on shelves and key words on the front such as ‘protein’ to entice users.
Refining their branding
While our client was pleased with their existing logo design, we worked to improve its application. The existing version included a red symbol against a blue background which decreased its overall legibility. Due to cost implications, we could not introduce any more colours to the logo to fix this problem. To stay within our client’s budget we tweaked their existing colours by first testing different shades of red against the dark blue to see if we could get it to stand out more. In the end, we chose instead to swap the colour of the text with the colour of the background as the red stands out much more against white.
Initial sketches
We began the design process by each doing a set of sketches to present to our client and learn which direction they wanted us to go in. We struggled a lot with moving on from Longhaul’s existing pouch designs, with our early experiments consisting mainly of rearranging the elements from the previous design.
Developments
We found our ideas became a lot more broad in our digital developments as we could then play with colours and layering. One of the biggest challenges we faced was representing the wide range of sports that Longhaul’s pouches could be used for as they provide energy for any endurance sport, such as marathons, cycling or hiking. It was more difficult to work as a team when we reached the digital stage and found we all took vastly different approaches.
Drawing inspiration from competitors in the field, we experimented with bright colours and searched for ways we could advertise the nutritional benefits of the pouches. In our attempts to make those stand out however, we lost a sense of hierarchy.
To no avail, we spent a great deal of time trying to make a typographic solution work. As we were struggling to figure out what imagery we could use a typographic design seemed ideal, though in practice it did not have the desired affect. One reason this did not work is it competed with all the other text elements. However, communicating wit our supervisor we began to work more effectively with hierarchy.
While the typographic experiments were unsuccessful, we realised we liked the appearance of the mountain and found it was very useful as a tool for aesthetically dividing up all the cover copy. This prompted us to further explore mountain imagery. After a meeting with our client and looking back at our research on competitors that the name ‘Longhaul’ should stand out the most, acting as further advertising for the product when other athletes see someone using it.
Communicating with our client, we then developed their favourite versions of the design. To divide up the workload we shared the chosen design documents and each made our own tweaks. One thing that really helped us visualise the packaging was creating mockups for our designs which we presented to the client at each of our meetings.
Reworking the tag-line
Throughout the course of this project, we went through many iterations of tag-lines as our client was unsure which words would best advertise their product so we tested many variations to see which ones were received well. In the early stages of the project, they were very keen to promote the slow release energy of their product so our early experiments primarily focused on this aspect. Our client gave us many key words to work with such as ‘performance’, ‘endurance’, and ‘prolonged energy release’. However, later in the project Staale and Amelia saw the value in promoting their natural ingredients and were also set on including the word ‘fuel’ based on how competitors were advertising their products. This became difficult for us as our client wanted too many words for what was supposed to be a short tag-line, and we struggled with including as much as we could but also making clear who the product was for. After experimenting with options such as ‘performance fuel’ and ‘endurance fuel’ we eventually decided on ‘sports fuel’ to make it known that it is a product for athletes.
The final design
One consistent idea that stayed with us throughout the project was the use of mountain imagery to echo Longhaul’s logo. You can see this experimented with in my initial sketches and it eventually developed into the polygon mountain range we settled on.
The back cover
When it came to designing the back cover, we experienced delays in our project due to Covid19’s effects on our client’s business. While we were awaiting feedback from our client on the front cover designs, Alex took the initiative to move forward with the back cover as the front cover was almost finalised. To make it cohesive with the front cover he repeated the mountain texture. Aligning with Longhaul’s need for a sense of identity we were able to ask our clients for their signatures, adding a personalised touch to the brand.
Technical preparation
Once our final designs had been approved by our supervisor, Rob, we were ready to send our files to the client. We had expected to send off print-ready files but 2 of the pouch flavours had still not been completed by the end of the project. We agreed with our client to clean up our inDesign files for another designer’s use in the future once those flavours are completed. We packaged the files along with guidelines for another designer to use. We realised at this point that some of our colours needed to be switched to solid CMYK or Pantone colours to print correctly, though this was easily rectified.
Reflection
Given the size of our team and the reduced workload from our restated brief we expected this project to be completed swiftly though in the end it took nearly a year. This was due to difficulty establishing contact with our client on occasion when Staale took out of country visits, as well as the issues caused by Covid19. We also needed to contact Gualapack at one point to understand the printing specifications as our client was unsure. Overall I am pleased with the designs we came up with and believe they match the image Staale and Amelia envisioned.
‘We have been extremely impressed with the designs that you have all put forward & are very happy with the final results. So thank you for all of the hard work!’ – Amelia Watts
‘It’s been a pleasure working with you all and I’m very impressed and pleased with the final result.’ – Staale Brinchmann
Shark Outfit Generator
I was partnered with Daisy and the 3 things she said about herself were;
- She likes sharks
- She likes shopping
- She likes chocolate
My initial ideas were having a robotic shark for a personal shopper, chocolate on tap in all shops and edible clothing made from chocolate. But for my final idea I created a ‘Shark Outfit Generator’. The idea is the shark eats you, acting as a walk in wardrobe filled with every clothing item and style available, helping to dress and style Daisy.
Labyrinth book narrative
For this brief I chose the word Labyrinth.
I cut out different shapes and sections on the pages, each page representing a different chunk from a labyrinth maze. As the chapters went along, I cut out more and more sections, making it harder to the reader to turn the page, trying to correlate the number of chapter to the number of maze pieces.
Each page had it own individual shape, which made the pages more fragile and easily tearable causing the reader to be more cautious as they turn the page, much like in a labyrinth. I started to block out some of the text but realised this made it easier to see where the next maze sections were. Therefore, I stopped making it more complex too read as the the text lines up with the sentences behind.
The Great Gatsby
Working with technology
At first, I chose my theme modern furniture. Then, I started searching on how I can present my theme and develop it into a mood board. I thought about what feel I want to present to the reader and what typeface I wanna choose. For me, circle presents the most modern shape and therefore the best way to show my theme. I presented technology on the shape on the right as I wanted to show the connection between every smart object. I connected the lines to a lamp that shows modern furniture and tried to play with the colors In order to show the 3D effect. Then, I used the shape on the left to show the floating feel. Finally, I used a modern typography that represents technology and played with the characters size in order to balance my logo.
Damien’s Ideal Gift – Tiger Trophy with other statues
Set of statues and trophies for different aspects and interests of Damien.
I wanted the main gift to be a trophy to celebrate his 5 years of playing ice hockey. The jersey has his team number (13), and one of his favourite animals is a tiger, hence the combination. The sketching began with a simple silhouette of a tiger standing up and then was decorated to fit the colours of Damien’s team.
The other animals are decorations for Damien’s room, as he could use some more. He told me he likes reptiles and small animals, and so I drew a chameleon and a chinchilla. My random words to incorporate were umbrella and magazine, so I gave the chameleon a little umbrella, and the chinchilla is holding Damien’s magazine called Tag, that he worked on a couple of years ago.
A Night at the Movies
Circus Poster
My chosen piece from the collections today was this circus poster. I was drawn to this poster because its helpful…but also not. It only gives generic information such as what they have to offer at the circus, but not specifics such as times and location. Therefore, making the poster unhelpful for public planning to attend. However, in the image below it shows a blank space below the title. I think this is where the timings and dates would have been placed but due to a circus constantly being on the move, it’s cheaper and easier to leave the space blank until needed. Another noticeable point in this poster is the size and shape of it. The image above shows the poster is a vertical rectangle. This type of shape would have been used firstly to reduce cost, but also for space on walls or lamppost to advertise. As the bigger the poster, the more likely it was to be cover by something else, therefore creating a poster this size helps to reduce those chances.
Further on to the poster being cheaply made, a lot of the print hasn’t managed to transfer properly. The image below shows an inconsistency in the blank print around the red letters. For example, on the letter T in tiger, there is a consistent black boarder around the letter. However, with the rest of the word there is a lack of black outline around the letter, compared to the word above, ‘Norna’. I think much of this is due to the poster being cheaply and quickly made. Hundreds of these would have been printed and they were only needed for a short amount of advertising time, so a small inconsistency in the print wouldn’t have meant much.
Due to the poster having no date or location, it makes it difficult to date the poster black to a specific time. The colours used are red and black, which were the favoured colours used in typography during the modernism movement, which helps to date it back to 1930s. Further to this, the image below shows that the circus was mainly made up of animal acts, which are now banned in the UK due to animal welfare. These types of acts were more popular and allowed around the 1930s, helping to date the poster back to the early to mid 20th century.
