Rebecca Poulin

Learning to design stuff and things

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Erin Gibbs Illustration and Response

Hearing about Erin's process was extremely informative, both her individual process and the teams process were interesting to hear about. The concept of trend prediction sounds extremely difficult to achieve, I hardly even know what is "trending" right now, let alone 6-12 months before it happens. I can only imagine how much time and research it takes to develop ideas that you believe will sell. I found it interesting that all the designers work individually on their own designs, I had assumed that in a company like that everyone would be far more involved in each-others process. Taking on such projects seems like it would be an extremely fun time, and I'm stoked we got to hear about a process and outcome so different from what we usually study.

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Secondary Research:

Using the internet we have been tasked with researching how the ground coffee making process has been re-imagined in the past, what new ways of brewing have appeared, or tools added to the brewing routine to make it cleaner or simpler.

I came across some concepts that offer an alternative that re-imagine the ground coffee brewing process all together. One of the example I found was the K-pod machine (image 1). These machines brew single servings of ground coffee. The brewer does not have to interact directly with the coffee grounds, they simply pop in a pod. While this is a quick, easy and clean process the issue is it is not environmentally friendly as each serving is individually packaged.

Another product I saw that reimagined the brewing process and removed the consumers interaction with the coffee grounds is a bag (image 2) that holds the grounds, the brewer pours boiling water into the bag and the coffee is made. Much like the K-pod machine issue, this item is single serve and creates far more waste than is necessary.

Lastly I came across a coffee “tea-bag,”(image 3) it’s hard to know if this form of brewing works as well as the others. It seems like such a simple straight forward solution but I do wonder why I have not come across it out in the real world, and only on the internet.

Other tools have also been created, these do not re-imagine the process of making the coffee but are simply smaller additions to the user’s regular brewing process.

One of the tools I found was a flared filling funnel (image 4), which is used to pour coffee grounds into the espresso makers portafilter, this just makes moving the grounds from the grinder or bag easier and will cause less spillage.

Multiple tablespoon measures can be found with the title of “coffee scoop,” (image 5) they seem to be deeper than the regular tablespoon measure but otherwise seem similar in how they function. It is unclear if they change the process of making coffee at all, or help the user move grounds from the bag to their final location.

I was surprised by the lack of innovation I found when researching. Coffee people are a market that spend A LOT of money, either on single cups of coffee at cafes or on gadgets to make the perfect coffee at home, I thought this market would be over run with unnecessary tools and packaging to “improve the coffee making process.”

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Frame your Design Challenge

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

The problem we are looking at is how to make the process of preparing ground coffee more straight forward or cleaner. We want the coffee drinker to have a smooth experience creating their ground coffee first thing in the morning.

Frame it as a design question.

How might we reimagine the coffee preparing experience to cause less hassle to the brewer?

The Ultimate Impact.

For the coffee drinker to not be inconvenienced in any way while making their morning coffee.

Possible Solutions.

Using gravity to aid in the process of moving the coffee grounds from the bag to whatever device is used to make the coffee.

A scooping device that does not allow for spillage. 

Constraints.

Time (month long project)

Budget (students with not a lot of access to funds to prototype or create)

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To Do:

On home page I would like to move the “my work” button down slightly

Work Page: sizing inconsistent.

Work page: Choose better imagery to use as click through.

Fix mockups. Choose bg colours for all mockups

On project page: add arrow to move between projects

On project page: Work on image placement, maybe take up whole half page? or add padding between?

On project page: Make text sticky?

Case Study: Finish compiling images of process for case study

About: Add more pop of some kind

A lot of these things are css tasks that I don’t have the knowledge to do without trying and failing 500 times. This is going to be a process. 

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Circular Design

A “radical, restorative, regenerative approach to business.”

The concept behind circular design is to create products that stay valuable, or whose material can be reused or updated. Circular design is a move towards a circular economy instead of a linear one, where items get constantly produced and disposed of.

I would not say that circular design is a follow up to design thinking but and addition. When the designer enters the “understanding” phase of design thinking, instead of only considering the users needs and perspectives the designer must know consider the life cycle of materials and the needs of the environment.

I see circular design largely as a response to planned obsolescence, in this way I believe it is only the next big thing if it generates profit for corporations. The disposability of products is and has always been a choice. As consumers are becoming more environmentally aware I believe this is pushing corporations to reconsider their design choices of planned obsolescence and more design may move towards this idea of the circular economy.

With our work and grad show we can consider:

How can we extend the use of the things we create? (ie. what we build to display our work, how we print our work)

How can we replace throw away materials like handbills/flyers/programs?

What is the shows impact on the environment?

What other choices can we make to be more environmentally responsible?

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Project 2 Standards Drafts

Brand Typeface

The brand typeface used throughout all promotional material will be Avenir Next. This typeface has an extremely extensive family, is web friendly and is legible, clean and approachable. I chose this typeface because it is used in the primary logo as the Dear Fern tagline. This keeps it consistent.

Photos

All photos used will be explicitly from Vancouver Island. All plants depicted will be local. Photographs should include a variety of people doing different activities offered, not just “hiking” but wild harvesting, cooking, snacking, learning and identifying species are some examples.

Shallow depth of field will be used to create a sharp focus. Low contrast and medium saturation.

Logo Use 

Some possible uses for the logo could be uniform related (baseball caps, vests) or wild harvesting paper bags with the logo.

These paper bags will be taken home with those who go on the tours. they could be designed to identify the herb/plant/berry inside as well as the logo.

Business Card Iterations

I experimented using a version with photography and a version simply displaying the logo. I am not sure which creates a better aesthetic for dear fern, I will have to consider a bit more about how I would like the brand to be

Base Design for Style Guide

The base design for my style guide will follow the simple design used for my presentation.

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Case Study Rough Write up

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The Rise of Design Thinking in Meetings and Events

SKIFT’s report began with an extremely concise explanation of design thinking that I liked because of its accessibility, they stated “design thinking attempts to codify the creative process, beginning with the needs of the end user, to develop clear solutions to complex problems.” Freeman expands on this concept by defining a design thinking framework directly related to event planning as: identify, formulate, build and debrief.

When applying this framework directly to the planning of our grad show I think we must prioritize the needs of the our attendees as well as our goals with those attendees (what is our (20/20) vision (see what I did there)?). We must consider our options in bringing these goals to life (do we want to get innovative with it?), create a plan and lastly, debrief, or in our case, celebrate!

SKIFT notes that prioritizing the needs of the individual end user is of the utmost importance, so when it comes to planning our grad show we have to ask: who is our user, how do we want them to feel when they attend our event, and what do we want them to leave thinking? I believe we have two main attendees; supporters- people who know us individually and are excited to see what we have accomplished, and wish to support us in this- and possible employers- people we want to impress, people we want to hire us. We have to consider what these two audiences hope to gain from attending our show, and also decide whose needs are more important. We must ask, what are our class objectives? How do we want to structure the experience of someone attending our grad show? We then must use this information to create a strategy to produce the outcome we wish to see.

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Rationals

Project One: Vela: Sex Worker Support Network

Vela: Sex Worker Support Network was a design solution created to combat the risks sex workers face in their daily lives relating to stigma, violence and lateral violence.  Vela's goal is to widen the reach of support organizations to offer more accessible services with fewer barriers to all sex workers and to allow those workers to connect with and support one another.

The solution, an application, had to benefit both support workers and sex workers and had to hold space for all services usually provided by support organizations. I designed Vela, the app, which hosted: a bad date reporting database, forums, a messaging system and an alert system that notified sex workers of perpetrators of violence in their area. Supporting design materials were also created to help spread awareness of the app.

Project Two: Koksilah Music Festival Program

Koksilah Music Festival works to bring community together to move towards Indigenous resurgence, reconciliation and decolonization. They highlight the perspectives of Indigenous creatives, activists and knowledge keepers, while raising funds for grassroots initiatives led by Indigenous people asserting sovereignty over their ancestral territories. 

I had to create a dynamic booklet that effectively shared the festival's schedule and information on the grassroots initiatives the festival was supporting. I wanted the attendees to bring the program home with them, so that this information may be shared with others in their community. Due to the festival's limited budget, I decided to design a single page double-sided booklet that had all the festival information on one side and a festival poster on the other side. This single page folded to create a booklet and was designed to incorporate the already existant festival branding into the booklet as well as the poster. 

Project Three: Bent on Art: Kootenay Queer and Trans Art Festival

Bent on Art: Kootenay Queer and Trans Art Festival is a series of events designed to promote the work of LGBTQ+ artists in the Kootenays while creating educational opportunities, fostering community connection, and promoting resilience through the arts. I had to generate public awareness through the creation of branding and outreach material for this empowering event. 

Through collaboration with the event organizers I created a logo that played on the generic symbology of a rainbow, often used to represent the queer community. Venue boards, posters and handbills were created to draw attention to the new event. I also designed a festival program that played an important role in expressing both the artist's and organizer's stories behind their powerful and political work.

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Dear Fern, Mood Board

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Brand Guidelines Rough

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Rough Rationals

Project One: Vela: Sex Worker Support Network

The Challenge:

Sex Workers are at risk of experiencing stigma and violence.

Design a solution to widen the reach of support organizations to offer more accessible services with fewer barriers to all sex workers. 

The Approach:

Considered what support services offer to sex workers (support, bad date reporting, resources, fighting for rights etc)

considered solutions that would benefit BOTH sex workers and support workers

 What I did:

the app had to prioritize the safety of sex workers so it is password protected, to create an account a support worker or another sex worker has to generate a password. 

the name vela= constellation stars connecting to create a network/ light up the night sky

the app hosted bad date reporting, forums (to connect sex workers to support workers and with each other), messaging system, an alert system for reports in the area

Project Two: Koksilah Music Festival Program

The Challenge:

To create a dynamic booklet that effectively shares the festival's schedule and information

for it to be brought home with them, not just thrown out. environmental+program has information about programs the festival supports

The Approach:

examined the current program, it was not visually appealing, lacked branding, boring. (mostly due to lack of budget)

through thumbs and prototyping, I came up with a dynamic single page solution

What I did:

Designed a single page double-sided booklet that had all the festival information on one side (folds into a book) and a festival poster on the other side

Incorporated all ready existant festival branding into the booklet as well as the poster. Deconstructed the logo to help create the illustration for the poster. 

Project Three: Bent on Art: Kootenay Queer and Trans Art Festival

The Challenge:

To generate public awareness around this new art festival creating space for queer and trans art to be displayed and celebrated

The Approach:

Discussed with key contact what sort of promotional material they were looking for

multiple iterations of logo

imagining themes and concepts to explore

What I did:

designed a logo

posters +handbills

sandwich boards for outside of venues

festival program

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Notes moving forward:

Consider my brand promise (passion behind every project/empowering people through design) and try and bring that into the description of my challenges.

Do not use jargon, easily accessible language

Consider adding brief client description

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Design Thinking Graphic

Design Thinking to me is both linear and cyclical, as demonstrated above. There is a definitive beginning, middle and end, but the middle gets a little murky.

The process always starts the same. The designer/innovator must identify the problem they need to solve, who the problem affects and what their needs are. After identifying this key information the designer can move onto the next phase. In this second phase there are four key objectives: to gain a deeper understanding of the user, to define the problem in greater detail, to experiment with different ideas and prototypes, once prototypes have been created they go through testing. Then, the designer repeats, any and all steps until they come up with a viable solution. After this solution if found the designer can move onto the third and final phase of implementation.

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Competitor Analysis

My key competitor is Big Tree Tours, located on Vancouver Island. This tour company serves a similar niche market, offering tours through V.I forests bringing both tourists and locals to visit some of the islands biggest trees.

My research did not bring me to a cost analysis, that information was not available online. But I did get a feel for their design aesthetics, their tone of voice, key message and unique selling point. All of which are in a similar vein as Dear Fern,. Both companies goals are to connect visitors and residents alike with the natural world through a form of eco-tourism. Both companies are grounded in exploring the land and the beauty it has to offer. How Dear Fern, differentiates is by providing educational tours and offering skills to those on the tours.

The competitor analysis that my classmates offered were not directly relatable to my company. Even though we are all working with some form of “tour” they were all vastly different. My teammates price points were all over the board. The audience was largely the same, tourists to the island but the key messages and unique selling points were incomparable.

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Brand Statement:

I am a community-orientated individual who shows up for people and causes I believe in. My work is driven by my politics. I create visually engaging material promoting social change. I want to collaborate with like minded artists and organizers to create meaningful, educational, beautiful, and political content.

Brand Promise:

Passion behind every project

or

Empowering people through design

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Colour Logo Iterations

I created colour logo iterations based on the colour palettes I chose last week for logo A. I also created a new logo using the font from logo c and the icon from logo a. I like both of these designs and am looking forward to feedback form the class about which logo and colour palette I should move forward with. 

The type in each logo is not black but the darkest shade of each of the colour palettes. One of the colours from each palette is used as an accent colour for the emblem. 

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Logo Iterations and Color Palettes

Logo A 

For the first logo I created a new fern image to curve with the shape of the circle. I like the idea of having a fern placed within a circle to be used in applications like social media avatars and as an emblem on a uniform or baseball cap. 

I changed the font to something less fancyful, while still cursive leaning this sprawling font seems more hand written and holds a bit more character, because of the name alluding to the writing of a letter, using a seemingly hand written font seemed fitting. 

Logo B

I created a new fern illustration for this logo and moved its location behind the words instead of between. Creating a simple fern watermark.

The font for this one is my own hand written sprawl, as mentioned above, it alludes to a hand written letter. 

This logo appears more casual than the other two and gives a nod to the “chill” vancouver island lifestyle. 

Logo C

For my final logo I simply added some texture to the wording and fern illustration and changed the stroke widths of the square and fern. I also changed the font and altered the kerning. This logo has more of a soft rustic feel. 

Colours

My goal with choosing a colour palette was to represent the island. The moss, the forests, the ocean, the plant life. My three palettes all include a deep forest green combined with another accenting colour. The first palette leans more toward ocean colours, deeper blues and touch of purple. The second is more moss and forest with a nod to the endless grey days on the island. Lastly, we have a palette of fall forest, greens with an accent of orange and yellow.