BCU Adventures

A blog documenting the adventures of a university student

[hbuniadventures]

Polynesian culture

While re reading the brief, ‘Street Feast’ said that they turn the locations into ‘Tiki watering holes’. and this can be seen from their Tiki bar ‘dicks magic tiki bar’ that holds most of the Polynesian aesthetics; grass skirts, wooden carvings and tropical flowers. 

This caused me to go down the route of a tropical mural for our bus, but to do that I need to know a few things about the culture. 

I decided to look into hula dancing because its iconic and recognisable with Polynesian culture and summer.

This made me stumble upon the symbolism for dance moves, and one that I thought would work well in the mural would be the ‘Come to me’ move: 

This would make the mural inviting, as if the woman herself is inviting them in.

Their traditional garb consists of mostly flowers and leaves as well as bright colours 

While looking through I found that there is a lot of red used which is good considering ‘Street Feast’ uses red and black in their palette.  With this in mind I may experiment with a limited colour palette  consisting of Black, Red and white- but this may seem a bit too gothic so I will play around with the colour scheme as well as the style:

I like the second illustration (James R Eads) and will try some experiments with this style in mind.

[hbuniadventures]

Campaign research

After looking at the ‘Street Feast’ brand and company for just general background information, I began looking at other advertising campaigns that other companies have done in the past. 

It seems that most successful advertising campaigns incorporate the environment:

These are just a few of the ones that I found extremely effective due to the fact that they got my attention- they made me have a response. This is what we need to do, to obtain a response from our audience so it gets them thinking and to actively seek out ‘Street Feast’.

Another idea is to include the target audience. This is a campaign done by IKEA in 2013 and is very clever in how it is executed: including the consumers in the advertising campaign makes them feel special almost, makes them feel apart of the team which kind of develops a relationship between the company and the consumers- a streak of loyalty that somehow compels them to buy the products.

[hbuniadventures]

Street Feast- Initial Thoughts

The Brief:

Come up with a campaign to launch the 2018 summer season for the street markets- promoting all markets while still maintaining their personalities and making sure people know they are under the ‘Street Feast’ brand.

Now, while doing my research into the individual sites across London I learnt that some are seasonal while some are strictly open in one season. So with that I knew that I had to incorporate the sites but maybe have more focus on those actually open in the summer of 2018- include them so people actually go back in the winter. 

I started looking around London as a whole (as thats where the Street Feast brand is placed) and I noticed that street art is very prominent- especially around the Shoreditch Market.

People like: 

Otto Schade 

A street artist that is known for his vibrancy and out of this world street murals. 

Alexis Diaz

The thing I like the most about Diaz is her ‘hybrid nature’ collection where she mashes up different animals in a twisted yet mystical way. This is something that I may want to do- but maybe with the London landscape or the different cultures that are involved in ‘Street Feast’

The little intricate details are something that I admire, as well as the surrealism really catches the eye of the viewer-making them look deeper into the piece to uncover more.

This gave me the idea of maybe doing an intricate piece- one that has people looking.

And then I looked for other inspiration and turned to the scenery in the 2017 live action of Ghost in a shell:

The idea of having a sky line filled with giants and surreal elements makes me think that it would get peoples attention- it'll make people look.  And with the Street Feast brand having multiple traders of different cultures- it would only be right as to have prime (almost personified) representations of those cultures as if to show that they are taking over London- a multicultural city. 

[hbuniadventures]

Twinings Tea- Research

Heres a timeline of the Twinings Tea.

Here is a botanical drawing done by Elizabeth Twining - A woman born into the tea trade. 

We were looking to incorporate these illustrations into the product. 

Here is an old limited edition campaign that Twinings did- different flavours of earl grey and other black teas. This is similar to my idea and so we intended to change the boxes or even make it Christmas themed- 

Here is a Christmas wrapping paper box that Twinings produced and we really liked the pattern and the idea and also intended to use this. 

[hbuniadventures]

Research into packaging

All these products and their packaging gave me the idea to want to create a product that almost makes the consumer want to collect the whole set- to keep the packaging because they're pretty or can be reused for something else. 

The Chinese tea box gave me an idea to redo the packaging for Twinings tea. But that wasn't the only advertising or packaging that inspired me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jrNeJoafk

This is the Dulux advert ‘Perfect Match’ that aired in the early 2000′s.  The reason why this advert stuck in my head for so long was probably because Dulux gave the colours a personality- made them into people that would not be forgotten. I remember going in search of these colours as if they were celebrities- they were on TV after all. 

Because of this thinking, I decided to pitch the ‘Personali-teas’ idea to my group- an idea that gives the teas of Twinings a personality- as if they were people.

There is a very long list of teas as seen by the pictures I took of the tea aisle in my local supermarket: 

As you can see, Twinings takes up most of the Aisle- with a vast collection of herbal, everyday teas and different flavours. The only competitors seem to be supermarket home brands in the ‘Earl Grey’, ‘Lady Grey’ and ‘English breakfast’ Etc. 

The only competition that seems to be a rival for Twinings Tea is in the herbal department, as most other tea companies have produced their own collections. 

While Twinings prices seem to be further up the scale, it is evident in their success that people are willing to pay their prices for the quality taste.  However, more often than not, I have seen a special offer on these tea bags by supermarkets- perhaps showing that stocks are building up due to the public not having enough disposable income to buy this high-middle class product. 

[hbuniadventures]

Mini Task collaborative branding and packaging- starting points

The objective was to pick an existing product and redesign the packaging, incorporating the elements of illustrative branding and telling a story with these elements. 

For this new redesign to be successful, my team and I needed to go through a number of steps:

Research

Brand analysis

Understanding target audience

ideation

technical design through to the final execution

The final outcome must be a meaningful visual redesign- presented to a high standard with evidence of collaborative work.