Feel Good Drinks: Evaluation

I chose this brief because I wanted to have at least one beverage based design in my portfolio. The competition brief was set by YCN and was intentionally an open brief. I was attracted towards this because it meant I could tackle the project from more than one angle and explore my growing interest in advertising and promotion. I wanted to create a coherent campaign which would involve the redesign of bottles, a package and also a poster series.

This brief has taught me a lot about designing for a brand and working within guidelines to ensure that all designs are consistent. I have improved on my ability to create a clear visual identity which is in keeping with the brands beliefs, personality and ethos. This is something I was really keen to work on as I felt it would be an important and beneficial skill set when it came to working in industry.

With this brief I have found myself beginning to think more conceptually about the designs, how they work in context, what the context is and who it its the designs are aiming at.  I feel this begun to change how I approached briefs and the design process I carried out. I also found that information I learnt whilst reading for my dissertation has come into play. For example breaking the product category norm by packaging the bottles in a box opposed to a carton board belly band.

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed this brief as I found the challenge of depicting a brand and its values to be a rewarding learning step.

Feel Good Drinks: Final Design Boards for Entry

Here are the final design boards for my YCN Feel Good Drinks entry. I wanted to keep it simple and easy to understand, keeping text to a minimum has always been a problem for me but I really wanted the focus to be on the work rather than me babbling on about it.

An overview starts the design boards and breaks down the project into the 4 different sections.

Overall I am really happy with my entry,  it has been fun to produce a light hearted campaign for a product which I am in the target market. I only decided to do it at the beginning of March giving myself a month deadline and although I was ill for a week coming up to the end I still managed to complete everything. This project has taught me that I can achieve a lot of work in a small period of time. 

Feel Good Drinks: Editing the Posters

These were the posters at the last point, I wanted to come back to editing them after the box design was finalised as this would give me a colour scheme. Also waiting until after the photoshoot meant that I could use my own images in the background of the poster. The poster series was pretty close to being finished however the colours were pretty weak, comparing them to the box it looked like two different projects. I decided to increase the colours to make them brighter, more vibrant and full of life this would then be more in fitting with the packaging design and also the brands personality.

Apart from the yellow poster, the other two backgrounds were brightened. I increased the size of all the type as parts of it were hard to read like the dainty 'from' and 'the'. There was also more space that could be filled, I reminded myself that the posters would be shown around the city - people would need to be able to read the type and get the message from a distance or whilst moving. 

The final poster range presents a fun brand personality whilst promoting a positive message. The poster range extends the brands ethos into a way of life. It encourages women to acknowledge and appreciate the everyday feel good moments whilst promoting the different flavours.

As I only had time to create the design for the Cloudy Lemon I have only been able to change the poster design. I tried to mock up a label design onto a bottle for the other posters but it looked absolutely terrible! Instead I have just used the current packaging in time for the close deadline. However I think I will extend the brief and create the bottles to take pictures of next time I use the photography studio as it would make the campaign stronger and also mean I can put the work in my portfolio when applying for jobs etc... as it will look like a finished project.

Applying the Posters

I have applied the posters to bus stops, buses, underground poster slots and electronic screens. I wanted to show how the poster campaign could work across the city to promote Feel Good Drinks.

Feel Good Drinks: Promotional Posters

After the photoshoot I realised I could extend the project and make a couple of posters using the images captured to promote the box and drinks. 

Taking the caption from the box and simply laying it over the image. This works but it doesn't fit in with the vibrancy and colour of the rest of the campaign. The second sentence is also too hard to read because of how small it is.

Changing the background from the original image to a pink compliments the yellow of the lemons and label design. The type has been changed to match that of the box, using two different fonts has made the message a lot clearer. The secondary follow up sentence has been changed to "but when something tastes this delicious, you might want to keep it to yourself" this almost challenges the shopper to try and share it, implying that they won't be able to.

This was a poster I was playing around with at the very beginning before I had such a set colour palette and design style. I liked and still like the slogan "you can have your cake and eat it!" in relation to the drink because it is the best of both worlds. The slogan also plays on the target markets view of food; they don't count calories instead just eat in balance, meaning they do enjoy cake and other unhealthy food. Returning to the design, I realised I could just use the slogan and general message to advertise the box for two.

I played around with a few different layouts for the poster experimenting which information was most important - the slogan or the benefits. It has been interesting to combine an image I have taken with type to create an advert as this isn't something I have done before. Since using the photography studio any photographs I take tend to be final images, however as with this project, I am trying to incorporate my own images into the design.

Feel Good Drinks: Photoshoot

Today's photoshoot went well, I managed to get some good pictures of the box and two bottles. Bringing in lemons to place around the products was a good idea as it really added to the final images.

Whilst I took a few photos with a coloured background it wasn't quite what I was after, plus the paper was really too small. Instead I decided to try and edit in a background in photoshop, that way I could use the exact pink and yellow that were used in the design.

Firstly I traced around the objects, then I separated them from the background layer.

Adding the pink as a rectangle over the image I then created a clipping mask so that it would hide the background but show the bottles. The layer was then set to multiply which lightened the layer meaning the shadows of the bottles and lemons showed through.

I did this will all of the images to change the background - it was time consuming but definitely worth it as the bright colours make the images stand out so much more as you can see with the final images below.

Feel Good Drinks: Box Idea

I came up with an idea to encourage people to buy more Feel Good Drinks and share it with their friends. A sturdy box would hold two bottles for the consumer to buy, the statement "Sharing feels good*...*but so does keeping them to yourself"  is light and playful, joking with the shopper that whilst buying the pack and sharing with a friend feels good, it also feels good to have them to yourself.
I played around with belly band ideas which would hold the two bottles together as this is common in the drinks category however I decided that going with a cardboard box would break the mould and stand out amongst competitors. The box uses vibrant pink and yellows to catch the shoppers eye, the type is in keeping with the poster range and the label designs.

Above shows the first design I was happy with, I wanted to mock it up into a box shape on Photoshop to get an idea of how it would look. The side of the box would have the 3 main selling points: 1 of your 5 a day, 100% natural ingredients and no added sugar. This informs potential shoppers what the products point of difference is from the competition as well as giving the shopper rational reasons to buy the box of drinks.

The back of the box would contain a blurb about Feel Good Drinks. One of the things the brief mentioned was that the target market are well educated and marketing savvy; this blurb would explain who they are and what is so good about the drinks. The tone of voice is personal and friendly, it tells an upbeat message which speaks honestly to the target market.

After mocking up the box out of a cereal box I was able to make adjustments and create a new net. The new net was drawn onto corrugated cardboard as this is a lot stronger and will be able to carry the weight of the two bottles.

Feel Good Drinks: Hand drawn Illustration

After the crit it was suggested that I tried a more hand rendered approach. I wanted to explore creating my own typography around the bottle of drink, above shows the beginning attempts. I wanted the words to have a fluidity to them and increase in size the further they got from the bottle.

It took quite a while to draw it out and get this far, I don't feel that this would be the wisest method to pursue for this brief as their is limited time and this is very time consuming. However it has made me more interested in hand rendered type and made me realise that I can draw more than bubble writing! I will look at doing a brief that involves handrendered type as this is a skill that would be good for me to develop.

Feel Good Drinks: Label Experimentation

After the successful crit with YCN in I have decided to put the poster design's to one side and begin working on the label. The label needs to be versatile so that it will work across a range of flavours, it should also be clear and easy to read from a distance; the design needs to catch peoples eye and hold their attention. 

I wanted to maintain the fun, upbeat personality that came across in the poster series, for that reason I decided to continue with the same fonts. I began playing around with different shapes for the bottle label and how the type would sit in it. Yellow on white is illegible; it is hard to read up close let alone from a distance on a shelf! Inverting the yellow and white makes the logo look cheerier and more energetic, however it still suffers with the same problem. 

Working with an archway shape provided enough space for all the information. An oval was added to the top centre of the shape to accommodate the logo linking the product to the brand. The logo worked best in pink on the yellow as it is the clearest and best contrast. Artistic brushes were added to the stroke of to make the logo visually more hands on and creative. The yellow type on the black both stands out from a distance and is clear to read, the black contrasts the yellow making this pop out which emphases the lemon flavour.

Experimenting with the yellow shape of the label so that more yellow frames the black. In the end the white was removed which suddenly made the label a lot stronger visually. The white was acting as a barrier between the yellow and black and was unnecessary. 

Ready to print - the front and back label with an extra label to attach to the lid and down the bottle. All the designs have a yellow bleed around.

Feel Good Drinks: Crit with YCN

The crit today was a lot more useful than I was expecting because I only started the project a few days ago so didn't really feel like I had enough work. However the feedback I received was really useful and has spurred me on. I took the two posters above to the crit with me as a starting point to get feedback.

The first thing that was mentioned was the black background - this is something I have been unsure of.  Perhaps black isn't the best colour for the background as it isn't associated with healthy. They also suggested changing the 1 of your 5 a day, instead of having that on each one using a different benefit each time. Overall they really liked the campaign and the feedback I received was useful.

Since then I have experimented with brightening up with posters making them lighter. Tints have been chosen to compliment the drink flavour, this works a lot better as the design is gentler and appears to be more healthy. However the colours on the right poster are still too weak, you would not be able to see them from a distance.

I have applied the poster to a bus stop to see how it would look in context. Again, I like the design but it needs tweaking just the colours and the size of the text. I think this is something I will come back to once I have started exploring the label design.

I have also created a third poster to complete the series, this poster uses much more vibrant colours which is more positive and fitting with the brands message. I will try to get the other posters to have the same impact as this one.

Another idea I had and quickly mocked up was a poster promoting the whole range saying "you can have your cake and eat it". I am not happy with this design so won't continue it for now, but hopefully it will be of use in the future.