OUGD 504 - Studio Brief 3

From my original ideas, I started looking into the idea of the science of plants, thinking about the various ways that plants are used. I came up with a couple of alternatives:

• Plants are used as food, or within food.
• Plants are used within science.
• Plants are used within medicine, especially as herbal remedies.

I really like the idea of plants being used within herbal remedies, and decided to look into this further. I came across a few articles on Wiki that covered a few aspects of this:

This is a list of plants that are used within 'Herbalism' - Click Here

This is the description of what 'Herbalism' actually is - Click Here

This is the description of what 'Botany' is - Click Here

From this last page, when I was reading through it, I noticed this section which grabbed my attention:

'The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη (botane) meaning "pasture", "grass", or "fodder"; βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν (boskein), "to feed" or "to graze".'

I really like the idea of the double meaning that could be taken from the word 'Boskein', which actually means to feed or to graze yet also is where the term botany comes from, which refers to the science of plants. This very nicely links my idea of both the science of plants and plants being used in food. I decided to play with this idea, and produce the branding and identity for a restaurant that is based around plants, particularly those that are used within herbalism. With this in mind, I want to keep a very science and medical theme running through all aspects of the design.

After my feedback, in which I was told to continue with this idea, I began thinking about the outcomes I would produce. I felt that in order to create anything else, I would initially need branding and identity which could then be applied to a range of different things. Although I want to create branding for a restaurant, I still want to keep it very much based around science and medicine. These are my logo designs, from my initial ideas all the way to my chosen logo:

I started very simple, with just the name and then including the number 87 which refers to the amount of plants I had found that were used in herbalism.

This shape an icon that is placed on buildings, and each colour indicates something different to fire fighters. For example, they represent how flammable and deadly the material within the building is, in case of a fire.

I started to think about science and linking my logo with a symbol often associated with science. I came up with these. The 'Az' design was an initial idea, before I had a name (it implies A to Z).

Keeping with the science theme, I tried out other shapes, as well as including the number again.

I didn't like my previous designs, and felt that they were very uncreative and I needed to create something slightly different that had more meaning behind it. I started working with imagery that related to both science and plants.

The design above is clearly linked with science, yet to me resembles the head of a plant. I quite like this idea, but it doesn't really represent anything.

I wanted to start thinking more about the idea of a restaurant and eating. I like the knife and fork, above, yet am unsure how I could link them in with anything. As I was a bit stuck, I recapped on the design that I had already done. I like the idea of using a box around something, a subtle hint of science. I tried using just the name, as well as the number.

Again, looking at iconic imagery, this time of medicine.

Here I tried linking plants and medicine, but I think it looks very tacky and almost a bit too much. It isn't the kind of imagery that would make you want to eat there.

I decided to create a periodic table, hoping this would inspire me. I initially made it in black and white, before adding colour. Although I didn't think of anything I could use it for, I did like the colours that were used and felt they worked nicely together.

I took those colours, and added them to some simple text. I felt that I was actually getting somewhere now, starting to create a logo I like as well as having a colour scheme to work with.

I think just the letters and numbers could work well, however I don't like how they look together. It seems very 'bistro', which isn't what I am trying to achieve.

I looked through what I had created, and chose some that I felt were the most effective. These are my favourite designs so far, and I will use these as a starting point for further experimentation:

Using the colour scheme, I created some quick variations of the same imagery in order to see how well the images worked together, as well as seeing how the colours worked with other types of imagery. I really like the colours as a set, but think the more subtle colours seem a bit dirty and aren't quite as suitable as the brighter, clean colours.

I liked these tablet icons, but felt that they looked too flat and two dimensional. I added some shadow and a small highlight, which I felt made it look much more professional and eye-catching.

Focusing more now on the medical side of the project, I wanted to include this within my logo. I like the cross, and think it is very strongly associated with a pharmacy, especially when it is red. I really like this design and think it is very open to work with using different colours.

I wanted to see this logo in context, and this could be a way in which the logo was used, perhaps within a sign or on the shop front:

Although I like these two designs that directly relate to the idea of a pharmacy, I feel that it takes away from the concept slightly and is too pharmacy and not enough restaurant. I think I will just stick to 'Boskein' in order for there to be less confusion.

I again played with this logo idea, seeing how it worked alongside other design elements.

This shows how by just changing the cross, you almost get a completely different logo. I like this idea, and think it could work very well if I was to use numerous colours. It would allow me to keep the same logo yet use multiple colours without losing any consistency.

This is my final logo, using all of the colours from earlier:

Now that I have my final idea sorted in terms of branding and identity, including a colour scheme and logo, I started thinking about how my concept could be pushed further. Thinking about a restaurant, I began thinking about the various different things that I could produce. One of these things was a receipt and order form. I was thinking about how my concept could work with these items, thinking about both a restaurant and my science and medical theme. This is how I came up with my idea of producing a prescription pad style order form, as demonstrated below:

However, when thinking about practicalities, I realised that in order for it to work, it would need some sort of clipboard or hard backboard; without it when the top sheet was written on it would be transferred onto every sheet in the pack. This made me re-think this design and try it out including this extra piece of separating board, like so:

Now that I had some sort of idea how this would work, I began thinking about what information would be on the actual order form. The same image would be printed onto both sheets of normal paper, and then whatever was written onto the top sheet would hopefully transfer through onto the bottom sheet. I would want this to look as medical as possible whilst also still containing all of the information required on an order form. This is what I think it would look like:

Preferring the idea of having my order form on a clipboard, as opposed to having a big pad of paper, I started thinking about how it would work on a clipboard. The papers would have to be kept aligned very well, as if they weren't aligned when the top sheet was written on the bottom sheet wouldn't be the same. I started drawing up some quick ideas of how the clipboard would work, finally coming up with a solution that I felt would work best.

I felt that this clipboard would work the best. I then started thinking about other things that would be needed for a restaurant. When thinking about take-away food, items that would need to be wrapped, I began thinking of how I could link my theme with this. I decided that it would work best if I was to have a sheet of paper that wrapped the food covered in a pattern of medical symbols. Working with what I had already created, I came up with these:

The feedback that I received from the above designs was very useful, and should've been pretty obvious. Most people said that if they were ordering food, they wouldn't really want it to be covered with tablets and pills. They felt that although this idea would work, different imagery would be needed. I then decided to try the same thing using the cross, as this still portrays the idea of medicine but in a more subtle manner.

I think that these work very nicely, and would make good wrapping paper for my take-away goods. From these, I started thinking about other paraphernalia that this idea could work on that linked medicine and a restaurant. I started thinking about business cards, but decided these might not be very appropriate. However this led me to thinking about loyalty cards. I started thinking about how these may look. 

These all have a very similar idea but slight alterations in order to see which worked best. From these, I started thinking about how loyalty cards actually work. In order for these to be useful, I would need to create a stamp that would be used for every purchase. I booked a session on the laser cutter and created this stamp like design onto a piece of lino. I first did a few tests on 3mm MDF so that I could make sure I was doing it properly. It was lucky that I did this as I did make a mistake or two to start:

However, I eventually just went for it and was actually really happy with the results. It just needs to be cut down to size and then should work very nicely as a stamp.

I really liked the idea of including smaller things that might not be something that you would instantly associate with a restaurant. With this idea in mind, I began thinking about the way in which some people might like to have something in between meals, or after a meal, that would freshen their palette. This would general just be a mint or something, perhaps fruit or water, however I think that this could be something that would work very well with a slight Boskein twist. I decided that I wanted to create a small packet of mints that would be taken in between meals or afterwards, but use actual mint leaves. These would be put into a tablet packet and packaged as though they were actual tablets. I began exploring this idea further.

To start with, I emptied out a paracetamol packet and removed as much of the foil as I could. I then took some mint leaves and started to roll them up so that they would fit into the small tablet pockets.

I then, using just some glue, stuck on a new sheet of foil onto the top of the packet, therefore re-covering it and making it seem as though it was just a new, blank set of tablets. I cut off the excess and slightly pressed in the areas where the tablets were so there were small indents.

This is how the final set of tablets look:

I am very happy with the outcome, and think they are quite convincing. I think that although this is something that may not normally be associated with restaurants, it is something that I think successfully pushes my concept and adds a little bit of creativity to the project. I then needed to create some sort of packaging for the tablets, something that continued the idea of medicine. I started this process by creating a basic net and put together some mock-ups to see how it all looked.

This is the first net and mock-up that I made, which I thought was very effective. Yet when I put the tablet packet into this packaging, it was too tall and probably would've been better suited to having two tablet packets inside it. I then just simply made the sides shorted so that it wasn't as tall.

As you can see, the second mock-up on the right is much shorter. This one fit the packet in very nicely, and the small semi-circle that is cut out from the top allows you to see the product and easily remove it from its packaging. I just need to create some sort of design to go onto this net. When thinking about the packaging, I started looking at existing medical packaging, things that you would find around the home. I noticed that a lot of this packaging contained braille, a series of slightly embossed circles that form words and letters that can be read by the blind. This inspired me to use braille within my own work, and I began looking for some sort of braille alphabet online. I found this: Click Here. This helped me to re-create the braille alphabet and therefore enable me to use it within my own work.

From this alphabet, I recreated my brand name with braille, this being the main thing I would want to emboss:

From the feedback that I received from my critique, I gathered information about various other outcomes that I could produce. However, most of the information I received I already had considered or knew, and I felt that it wasn't very useful. I didn't get much direction from the crit and felt that I needed some quality feedback in order to ensure I was pushing the right ideas. Me and Harrison decided to conduct our own crit in order to get more honest feedback and hopefully have more idea about where I was going with the project. After having explained my ideas and concept with Harrison, showing him the work I had already done and talking through the ideas I had about pushing my concept, he gave me some very good ideas about various alternatives. One of which I really like: he suggested that I should focus less on the restaurant idea as a whole, and focus in on one aspect. Some feedback from the crit that I liked was the idea to print onto bottles, and Harrison thought up focusing more on this. And so:

Change of plan.

I am now creating a plant based health drink brand, producing bottles and other various printed collateral. Although this did mean that some of my ideas and experiments were now not usable, some of the things I had produced would still be appropriate. I still think that my tablets would be a nice addition to the collection and could just be some sort of promotion for my brand. With this new idea, along with new motivation, I set out to create a business card for my new brand. I started with some very basic information, as well as the dimensions of my business card which I have taken from an existing card for Evolution Print.

From here, I started experimenting with different layouts. I wanted to keep my card very clean and almost clinical in appearance, pushing my concept further.

After having some ideas about the front of the card, I realised that if I was to emboss my card, I would also need to consider how this would effect the back of my card. With this in mind, I though about what information I would need to include. I came up with a small explanation of the company, ' A company focusing in plant based health drinks'. This would be accompanied by contact information, all of which I just made up for the purposes of this project.

As I decided on this being my favourite design for the front of the card, the grey would be embossed, I had to include this on the back.

The front of the card was flipped, as though it was the back of the card which would have been effected by the embossing. I then worked with this factor, placing the information around it. Here are my experiments:

My favourite design was this one:

I decided to print this off and see how it worked with actual embossing. To emboss this, I decided to try out laser cutting once again, and cut out the braille and kept the small circles and the cross. I then stuck this onto another sheet of wood, hoping that this would enable me to be able to emboss.

These are my embossing sheets, and will hopefully allow me to emboss. However, now that I have done it I am unsure as to whether these will emboss without creasing the paper. I think that the small raised sections are too tall and when the pressure is applied it will force my paper to crease. We will see.

This is the business card I am going to use to test embossing, however I don't really like it any more as a final. I think it seems very plain and boring, nothing about it makes me want to know more. I will reconsider the actual design of it after this test; maybe the emboss will actually make this card look much more professional and appealing.

As thought, the tall pieces of wood I was trying to emboss with have creased the card instead of creating a nice, clean emboss. This is something I am going to have to think about later on in the project if I am going to use embossing. I realised that I had become slightly stuck in creating these cards, they all looked very similar and had nothing about them that I thought was particularly interesting about them. I started looking at medical packaging and printed collateral once again and started to notice something. A lot of medical packaging uses gradients, this being something I hadn't thought about.

Once I started thinking about gradients, and what they could represent, I thought of an idea. I could use the gradient as a symbol of health, the strong colour representing strong health and it fades into a very light tint of the original colour which represents diminishing health. I really liked this concept and felt that it fits in with the rest of my brand identity. 

When thinking about gradients, there were two ways I could create the same effect; I could either have an actual gradient, or I could have a series of shapes that slowly decrease in tints which would therefore represent a gradient. In my opinion, as well as those people that I got feedback from, the use of tints was much more interesting and appropriate. Thus, I added this design element in with the business card to see what it added.

I really like this touch and think it really makes the card seem much more balanced whilst also adding another level to the concept. I added it to the front to make both sides seem as though they are from the same card.

The final cards that I decided to go with look like so:

Now that I was focusing on a health drink brand, as opposed to a restaurant, I need to create some sort of packaging for my bottle. I think that with my project now being focused around the drinks themselves, they need to be much more considered and thought out. I looked through my list of 87 plants that are used within herbalism, and started to create my own recipes. I felt that four different drinks would be appropriate to start with and began thinking about what each drink could do; if they are meant to be health drinks then surely each drink would have to help cure a different ailment. With this in mind, I came up with these four drinks that I felt successfully covered the main problems people have with their health:

• Aches & Pain
• Sleep & Anxiety
• Skin & Diet
• Cough & Cold

I wanted to continue using the colour scheme I was already using, so I decided to simply pick my favourite four colours from the original colour choice. I then paired up the colours to which drink I felt it suited best. This looked like so:

I felt that blue was a calming colour and was very suited to aiding with sleep and anxiety. Green is a very natural colour and the colour associated with good health, which I think is very fitting for skin and diet. Red often represents danger and pain, which links very nicely with aches and pain. That left yellow and cough and cold, which although there is no clear link between the two, I think that they still work together quite nicely regardless. I then had to make some actual drinks, combining three plants that are all used to combat the ailments I match them to. For example I made these four combinations:

• Aches & Pain - Elderberry, European Mistletoe and Feverfew
• Sleep & Anxiety - Chamomille, Passion Flower and Valerian
• Skin & Diet - Acai, Fenugreek and Marigold
• Cough & Cough - Eucalyptus, Lemon and Licorice Root

The plants I have chosen are all actually used to help work against the problems that my drinks claim to aid. I would also include carbonated water and colourings within my ingredients, which allows me to then pick how each drink would look. I then set about trying to create some packaging for my bottles.

I wanted to keep my strong medical theme running throughout the bottle packaging, and so looked further at medical packaging as well as other packaging that I really liked. I made a net which I then printed and mocked up so I could see how it all fit together.

I had left the yellow strokes visible so that I knew where I needed to fold, yet after I had printed it I actually really liked the yellow edges. I realised that there were a few issues with this mock up, like the fact that I needed more tabs at the top of the box in order for it to close properly. I went back to the computer and altered a few sections, and added more design elements. I felt that it needed more colour, especially as each box would be the same. Once I felt happy with the design, I printed off another version and made a mock up.

I also made a mock up of how it would look for the two smaller bottles, as there were a different shape. Although the net was different, the design was the same.

I really like how these boxes look and think they successfully portray my medical concept whilst still containing all of the information required. For the finals, I will need to make sure that they are made from sturdy material, as the bottles are fairly large and heavy. Although these mock-ups had the correct proportions and were the right shape, they were much smaller than the finals would need to be. These are how the nets looked for the final boxes:

Lid:

Title:

Package Contents:

Barcode and Ingredients:

I also needed to make packaging for my mint tablets, and now that I have these boxes it will be fairly easy to do so; I plan on keeping the same design but just changing the shape and net. This was my first design:

However, I think that there isn't enough solid colour, or in this case solid black, and it doesn't quite fit in with the other packaging. With the emboss being too big to actually fit on the front of the box, I think that in this case it would be more appropriate to not include it. Therefore, I tried to imitate my bottle packaging slightly more by having a larger area of solid colour and including the three white stripes on the bottom right edge. Once I was happy with the design, I made another mock up to check it looked ok and was suitable for the tablets.

I really like this design and think it fits in nicely with my collection. I need to make sure that the tablets now fit inside, otherwise the net will need altering further. Everything should be fine, as I am using the nets made earlier.

They fit perfectly. I am happy with this outcome and will be including it within my final printed collateral.

Now that I have all of my packaging for my bottles sorted, I need to design the actual bottles. For this, I have purchased some vinyl from Sydney Beaumont, a local supplier of self-adhesive vinyls. I began designing how I wanted the bottles to look, already having some sort of idea. I want the bottles to be very simple and clean, with most of the information being on the box itself.

These are the dimensions of my bottle, including the correct dimensions. This allows me to design without having to worry about things not fitting how I expected after printing. I also thought about some of the things that I wanted to include on my bottles:

These were the main things. I wanted my name or logo on the bottle, along with perhaps a barcode and possibly some braille; the vinyl is slightly raised from the bottle and I think this could be a nice touch. From this, I started creating some ideas and various lay-outs:

This bottom design is the one that I prefer the most. It is very clean and to the point, whilst still fitting in with the design aesthetic of the rest of my project. I then just applied the same layout to the other bottle, ensuring that it works just as well on that shaped bottle. Which I think it does:

I then put together a few sheets that I could take downstairs to the print room, where my vinyl would be cut. These are the sheets that I put together, containing everything that I wanted to be cut:

Issue: When I got downstairs, and showed James what I wanted to be cut, he told me that there is no way the vinyl cutter could manage it. What I didn't realise, was that it is meant to cut big, bold designs and really struggles when asked to cut such small delicate details. This caused me to rethink my design, only including the main bits. Once I had got rid of any detail that wasn't necessary, I went back down and got these bits cut:

Even with these, I still had some trouble with the cutter. Some of the elements didn't cut very well, and so I had to recut the same thing three times in order to get everything that I wanted. This is something that I will take into consideration next time I plan on using vinyl.

Now that I have the bottles, tablets and packaging all sorted I started thinking about what else I would need to design. Two things that sprung to mind, thinking about companies and brands, was creating a letterhead and an invoice. These are things that would be needed if this brand was to exist and so I felt I should create them. To start with, I wanted to create an envelope to put them in. I think that by creating my own envelope, as opposed to using an existing one, would make it much more personal and professional. I kept it very simple, using a basic net that I created, and just adding the mere basics to the actual envelope.

However, I think that this works quite nicely and would look rather professional if you were to receive this in the post. If I had more time, I would've liked to create an envelope that was more interesting and perhaps linked in further with my concept. I then designed a letterhead and invoice, again due to poor time management I kept these very simple and clean:

Invoice:

Letterhead:

As you can see, they are both very similar and very simple. This being due mainly to my concept, as I wanted to keep the design aesthetic consistent throughout all of the material that I design; ensuring that everything looks very clinical and clean. The light grey braille, as in all the other cases were I have used it, would be embossed. However, due to poor time management this was another design feature that was effected. I feel that these pieces could've been a lot better if I had organised myself more efficiently.

These are my final outcomes, which include:

• The bottles and the boxes that they come in
• The mint tablets, and the packaging that it comes in
• The letterhead (which is inside one of the bottle boxes)
• The invoice (which is inside one of the bottle boxes)

Bottles and boxes:

Mint tablets and packaging:

Although I had actually designed a reasonable amount of printed collateral, including business cards, stamps, embossing sheets and an envelope, due to very poor time management these were all things that unfortunately couldn't be printed in time.

Website proposal:

These screenshots document the process of creating the website to go alongside my project. I started by creating a basic grid system, which I then worked with until I came up with a design that I liked and felt was appropriate.

I then used a website called 'OpenBrand' in order to place my website pages into a predesigned template of my choosing. This allowed me to see, and show, how my final website would actually look. And so, my final pages look as follows: