UCC Coffee: Revisit
Posted: April 10, 2016 Filed under: competitions, Subject Y3, Year 3 | Tags: abacus, brand, cafe, cafes, cf24, cmyk, coffee, colour, companies, ethical, experimentation, finalisation, grand, graphic, graphics, icons, identity, illustration, indie, modern, monotone, points, problem, project, resolved, revisit, revitalised, small, student, sustainability, time, touch, UCC, undergraduate Leave a comment
With just only a few weeks left, I am aiming to revisit 4 of my projects to finalise their content and to finish off any ideas I may have. With my to-do list I am going to focus on a different project every 4 days to give myself plenty of time to reflect on my overall work and for me to improve my portfolio and exhibition piece.
My first project from today is for competitions, UCC Coffee. For this project I revitalised the packaging design of a small selection of blends from Brazil, Vietnam, Peru and Guatemala under the name Grand Cafe Coffee. This coffee was to be on the shelves of small-time sustainable cafes and restaurants, not branded establishments. The brief asked for the packaging to reflect the brand values of sustainability and fair-trade to the coffee farmers. My previous attempt at this was exciting and I really enjoyed experimenting with hand-drawn illustrations. I feel this effect was unique and innovative which suited the small-time cafes and restaurants image. It made the packaging feel less corporate and encapsulated the personal qualities of a sustainable, fair-trade coffee.
I want to revisit the selection of packagings I have already created and work on them to make them more location-focused to express the culture and farmers behind the coffee beans. To do this I will research into the iconic imagery of each location and how I can bring this into my designs. I would really like the packagings to link up when they are positioned next to each other to show their unity.
I will also explore the possibility of using this project as part of my Exhibition piece as there are many possibilities that I could work with in terms of exhibition space to engage the audience.
UCC Coffee: Coffee Label Redesign
Posted: November 24, 2015 Filed under: competitions, Subject Y3, Year 3 | Tags: 500g, awards, beans, blend, brand, brief, cafe, certified, coffee, colour, competition, contrasting, ethical, fair, formal, grand, graphics, hierarchy, identity, illustration, label, mockup, modern, monotone, original, packaging, palette, pattern, presentable, rebrand, revitalisation, roasted, slow, student, traceable, trade, UCC, YCN Leave a commentThe first touch point I wanted to rebrand was the coffee packaging. I liked the idea of having a generic plain packaging which would made from recycled material and eco-friendly ink. This would be similar across every blend of coffee from Grand Café. Upon packaging each blend would have their own sustaina-label applied with their own unique colour to be easily identifiable to the consumer. I started off with a square block of colour to give the company a modern approach to symmetrical design. I followed this by adding an additional rectangle below for additional information. After manipulating and formatting the text I was happy with the layout. I feel it has a clean and understandable format and hierarchy of text. I decided to use white text for clarity and reinforce the ideology of sustainability through the use of lighter colours.
To keep the colour theme original I steered away from coffee colours and added contrasting tones to the different blends available. The brief does identify that I am not restricted to the packaging and available blends which gives me the freedom to really explore the brands possibilities to make the packaging presentable on small coffee shops counters and connect to the modern consumer.
Here are 2 alternative mockups of possible coffee 500g packaging. I explored the positioning of the label and found that it was more sensible to have the label lower down to allow the consumer to refold the packaging after use, keeping the coffee’s taste and aroma fresh.
Here are the four different blends and their recognisable colour palettes.
My next move is to apply the certified logos on each of the packaging accordingly. I am also going to explore and illustrate ethical-related packaging wrappings, possibly for each individual blend to allow myself to relate it to the culture and background of the coffee’s origin in a step towards fair-trade awareness and promotion to the consumer.
UCC Coffee: Illustration Experimentation
Posted: November 23, 2015 Filed under: competitions, Subject Y3, Year 3 | Tags: abacus, brand, cafe, cafes, cf24, cmyk, coffee, colour, companies, ethical, experimentation, grand, graphic, graphics, icons, identity, illustration, indie, modern, monotone, points, problem, project, resolved, revitalised, small, student, sustainability, time, touch, UCC, undergraduate Leave a comment
To begin my project I wanted to create a brand identity for UCC Coffee. To do this, I took inspiration from my year two brand world project ‘Hunter Company’. I started this by drawing out many small icons which reflected coffee and the touch points of the coffee-consumer relationship. I drew things such as coffee mugs, utensils and machinery. I scanned these into illustrator and used the trace tool to turn these drawings into digital illustrations. I have recently really enjoyed using this method of creating digital illustrations as their imperfections add character to digital based media.
As you can see below I created a range of icons suitable to use for the brand identity. I selected around 10 icons which I most preferred and started to tightly arrange them into a pattern. I wanted to keep the colour scheme monotone as to not attract to much attention from the consumer. Instead I think putting colour into the labels and Grand Cafe identity is a more sensible option.
I felt that the tightly packed pattern is very effective, however when used as a background it feels to clustered and dark which contrasts against the ideology of greener, purer brand intentions which UCC would like to promote within this brief.
To resolve this design issue, I redeveloped my pattern by spacing out the icons , I also kept the majority of the icons horizontal to make it easily identifiable to the eye. From here I would like to experiment with overlaying this pattern onto various touch points to reinforce the revitalised brand identity of UCC Coffee.
Touch points I would like to cover over the next week: Coffee cup, posters, sugar sachets, various forms of coffee packaging, tray liner sheets, staff uniform, table information leaflets/ signs.
These will experiment and continue a brand identity I will revitalised for UCC Coffee’s product Grand Café.
Ben Walton 
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