Live Brief

I had the opportunity to work with the company relays on a poster to promote an urban festival the were holding at a senior school. It tested me as a designer as an urban festival is something that I am not really interested in, so producing something that would appeal to that target audience was a challenge and this image is what I came up with last night! I have used quite basic vector imagery but I think it answers the brief effectively.

I have been deciding how I want to sell luncheon meat and how I am going to package it. I have been thinking I have decided that I want to produce luncheon meat in some sort of sandwich along side other remade lunchbox products to create a retro lunchbox. I have realized that luncheon meat will not sell if I try and rebrand it to reach more up market customers, It just will not happen. It needs a usp and almost a gimmick, as it is already produced as a novelty food, I want to keep it that way.

I want to make a neat and intricate folding box to act as the lunchbox for the rebranded items.

I have been researching nets and sifting through packaging blogs for inspiration and have found a design that i really like and may well redesign and taylor to suit my needs.

I have just started the third section of this brief "New from old". I have to research and rebrand a redundant product from a list of foods. I chose Luncheon meat, purely because as a child I would always ask for it from Asda just for the 'billy bear' face on it knowing full well that I hated the taste!

The target audience for this processed meat (if you can call it meat) is obviously children, but to make this answer the brief I want to make the main demographic up market shoppers. Potentially people who shop in Waitrose, M&S and other food shops of that reputation.

I want to produce a respectable name and package for Luncheon meat that pushes the product into a more classy area. I think I will now go to Waitrose to look at and feel some of the packaging to give me a better idea of what I want to achieve.

The Crit.

We had to stand up in front of the class and perform a one minute presentation on our ideas and concepts and afterwards we would hear the tutors and classmates thoughts and additional ideas. I had criticism about the way I use a similar style throughout all of my pieces (surely this is just developing your unique style?) I used a hand rendered image and type combination on my egg box to give it that organic free range feel but that was criticized as it was in my own style. I should of stood up for myself and said "But you would not find a plain, slick and graphical corporate logo on an organic egg box", but I lack confidence when talking about my own work, especially when trying to justify something!

At this stage I still felt I had not answered the brief but I also felt I was not getting the feedback I needed to achieve the answer. After having a bit of a rant with myself and after questioning my existence on this course I realised I have a lot of potential and I really do need to broaden my skills, even if I discard them eventually. I need to not be scared to take a risk in a subject or specialism I am not so familiar in.

I  have come back to this first year fresh faced and ready to create some strong outcomes, but being back has made me realise that I have got so much to learn!

For the first task of the first brief we were given the opportunity to say thank you to someone, making sure we clearly address language (visual and written), tone, context and process and methods of production. It was quite a vague task to complete so I found finding someone to thank pretty difficult. Once I had sat down and spoken to sally about a few ideas I thought I had a clear understanding of what I needed to achieve.

  I was brainstorming for a while and thought it might be quite a nice idea to thank chickens for eggs, cows for milk and sheep for wool as I have quite an obsession for drawing animals at the moment!

After a having a tutorial with Sally I soon realised that I would not be answering the brief as you cannot really say thank you to chickens and that maybe I should have a look in to who I could thank who is helping animals. I looked in to the r.s.p.c.a and various other animal charities but I thought about pinpointing my thanks to just one person so I rethought the idea. I then remembered that Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall made a program about battery farming chickens and that he was really trying to make a positive impact on how we rear and eat animals in the U.K. So who better to thank than him.

I want to produce something thats visually and personally appealing to him and something that answers the brief properly. I thought about what Hugh would want to receive as a thank you to him for changing the way the public look at battery farming. Therefore, surely giving him a product of what he was trying to achieve (people getting involved in maintaining free ranged lives for chickens) would be a good idea? So if i sent him some eggs from home reared chickens I could re make a label and thank him on that. I know he has probably got enough eggs, but I think the gesture is very personal to him as it would make him feel fulfilled that he is making a difference to the way animals are being treated.