UCC Coffee: Research
Posted: November 18, 2015 Filed under: competitions, Subject Y3, Year 3 | Tags: brand, brief, BRITA, cafe, case, certified, client, coffee, concept, consumers, creative, dedicated, development, documentation, economic, efficient, environment, ethical, fair, farmers, friendly, grand, graphic, group, growers, ideas, identity, illustration, Ireland, japan, landfill, origin, personality, professional, project, range, record, research, resource, social, study, sustainable, traceable, trade, UCC, uk, united, vision Leave a comment
What is UCC?
UCC is Japan’s largest producer of coffee and is responsible for £2bn annual sales turnover globally and 7,300 employees, including 30+ Q-graders and World Siphonist Champions. It supplies some of the world’s leading companies in retail, out of home and industrial markets and owns successful retail and out of home brands – Source
About Grand Café
Grand Café is a specific range created by UCC Coffee which is 100% traceable to its origin and fully certified to be ethically and sustainably suited to be fair-trade to the land and farmers who grow their coffee.
Vision: To be the most respected certified coffee brand in the out of home market.
Brand Concept: Promoting the social and economic benefits of certified coffee whilst providing a feel good factor and peace of mind.
Reasons to Believe: Committed to industry certifications FT, Organic and RFA; solid taste test performer; our best-selling branded product range
Brand Personality: educated/knowledgeable/travelled/down to earth/respected/direct/academic/possesses gravitas
Tone of Voice: friendly/accessible/no jargon/matter of fact
Sustainability
UCC Coffee source certified sustainable coffees from farms and cooperatives across the world, which are each 100% traceable to their origin. Their ethical credentials include, Fairtrade Rainforest Alliance and Soil Association. This in turn makes their coffee fair for growers, the environment and their customers.
UCC Coffee are also dedicated to improving their resource efficiently throughout the life cycle of production. Their packaging is part of the Comply Direct compliance shame which means that their machines are selected for their energy efficiency. They also continue to cut their carbon emissions from their roasters and fleets too.
The company select their partners and suppliers carefully who are as dedicated to the environment as UCC Coffee. Amazingly they even recycle all of their water filters through one of their partners BRITA Professional, whom have more recently achieved zero landfill status.
Target Audience
The ideal target audience are businesses who are ethically aware, this includes non-branded coffee shops, cafés, pubs, quick service restaurants and contract catering. UCC Coffee does not sell directly to consumers however, the nature of Grand Café means that it is only available to companies who comply with their corporate responsibility requirements. More recently more and more businesses are becoming aware of their impact through their buying choices and looking for a coffee that promotes sustainability in the industry.
Core Products:
Grand Café Rainforest 500g
Tasting notes: Chocolately, sweet, with a hint of its slow roast, gives this blend real character. Bright and balanced with citrus hints and a clean and balanced aftertaste.
The source: Colombia, Honduras, Brazil
Grand Café Fairtrade
Tasting notes: Deep, intense coffee with a full body and lasting taste.
The source: Colombia, Vietnam, Peru
Grand Café Triple Certified
Tasting notes: Rich, balanced coffee with red fruit top notes and a sweet creamy finish.
The source: Peru, Guatemala, Sumatra
Grand Café Fairtrade Decaf
Tasting notes: A clean mouth feel with a hint of sweet watermelon. All the flavour but without the caffeine.
The source: Peru
History
“UCC Coffee UK & Ireland has been operating in the UK coffee market for over 20 years, but wehave not always been known by the same name.
In 2010, First Choice Coffee – the UK’s OOH coffee market leader – and Gala Coffee – the country’s largest retail own label roaster – merged to become United Coffee UK & Ireland and part of the United Coffee European Group.
Having operated independently, the combined strength of both businesses and ambitious growth plans, led to the transformation of United Coffee into the UK’s leading total coffee solution provider.
In 2012, United Coffee Group was acquired by UCC Holdings Co Ltd. (UCC), to create one of the top five biggest independent coffee companies in the world. Following the acquisition, United Coffee retained its identity before rebranding as UCC Coffee UK & Ireland in 2014. – Source
Real World Project: Climate Change – Workshop with Matt
Posted: October 22, 2015 Filed under: Real World Project, Subject Y3, Year 3 | Tags: audience, change, client, climate, creative, distribution, finance, iron, potential, professional, progression, project, real, smart, students, success, target, team, triangle, World Leave a commentToday’s session we had a workshop with Matt. We looked at what we thought makes good design and how it can have an effect on the consumers decision for purchase. After yesterdays tutorial it was a real eye opener to the rate – we as designers – should charge for our time. To more professional readers, £600-800 a day may seem reasonable, however I think our year were surprised by this. It really put into perspective how we should see ourselves as creatives. Matt asked a series of questions to help us identify what we wanted.
What do you think success looks like
For an individual, I think success is when you have a happy balance between work and social. It is when you have achieved something from your hard work, the outcome may not be the most successful, however it is your best and its about taking the time to realise this. Success is about exceeding at your goals and ambitions in life.
For a client/ business, success is having the project hit the right target audience and conveying the correct message. It goes more into profit and capitalism however for a company to survive in a globally changing market it is important to make profit from their products.
where do you see yourself 18 months from now
In 18months I would like to see myself in a financially stable position, and as previously mentioned a healthy balance of work and social. I would like my portfolio to have a collection of well-driven projects which I am proud to present to potential clients. I would also hope that my professionalism with clients has improved.
From here we wrote down 5 sentences where we would like to see ourselves in 18 months time. After we did this we had to correlate any possible barriers to these goals and how we can overcome them.
This way of problem solving would help lead to success if I used them to tackle client projects. An acronym called S M A R T can be used to identify and achieve goals
S pecific
M easurable
A ssignable
R ealistic
T ime related
Matt went on to talk about ‘The Iron Triangle’. This triangle refers to project management, from here you can only maximise two of the components at any time, however the last component won’t be strong. For example, if you want something down quick and cheap, the quality won’t be very good. Or if you want something done cheap and with good quality, it may have a long turn around.
Matt told us that for every hour you work, you will waste 20%. And so an hours work in reality will take 1hour 20mins to do.
80% work time is controlled
20% work time is wasted
“If you fill your diary, you will progressively fail.”
This week half the creative team have been absent, however this was no problem as we communicated through social media to keep them updated and where we were. We also shared our current designs and ideas which they were happy with. We allocated different design touch points such as the packaging, manual and stickers/magnets. This will be pulled together at our next meeting on Monday.
It was also a great moral boost finding out that our client is interested in taking our project further and wants to involve the student union for distribution.
Persuasion Revisited
Posted: May 31, 2015 Filed under: Subject Y2 | Tags: card, cardiff, design, development, editing, graphics, homeless, improvements, order, persuasion, professional, pvc, review, shelter, student Leave a comment
This week has been busy, I have revisited all of my projects to make adjustments and general improvements. With persuasion I was advised to make adjustments to the position of the card name. After some experimentation, I felt the card was to bland. Instead I worked with what I had and added a cleaner layer between the text & the image and then increased the stroke thickness on the outline of the text. This general adaption has made a huge improvement to the ShelterCard. I also worked on cleaning up the packaging and made minor improvements to the text. After making these improvements for my final review on Monday, I have ordered 2 ShelterCards to be professionally printed onto PVC card. This will allow me to inspect the quality before ordering a larger quantity.
Self Promotion Stickers
Posted: May 13, 2015 Filed under: Subject Y2, Year 2 | Tags: company, cover, cv, designer, digital, domain, employment, internship, jobs, letter, presence, professional, promotion, resume, self, stickers, student, unemployed, wanted, website Leave a comment
I thought I would spice things up and make a few stickers to promote myself and my new website. They are 38mm in diameter so manipulating the text to be readable was a task. I feel my stickers are a little top heavy but drawing the attention above the centre point is more pleasant on the eyes. I have reused the same colour theme throughout my website, résumé, cover letter, Facebook & Twitter and stickers. I hope to create a business card too! My designer presence is doing it’s best!
My Résumé and Cover Letter design
Posted: May 12, 2015 Filed under: Subject Y2, Year 2 | Tags: branding, consumerism, contact, creative, css, cv, design, designer, development, digital, employment, experience, feedback, html, icons, in-house, information, internship, jobs, logo, margin, marketing, menu, original, pdf, portfolio, presence, professional, profile, promotion, resume, seeking, self, social, student, success, undergraduate, unemployed, web, website, work Leave a commentOn the weekend I began redesigning my CV and cover letter to have a unique colour swatch which linked to the theme of my online portfolio. I used a turquoise and grey contrast as they are soft colours and stand out from the universal use of black. More deeply, the psychology of colours suggest that blue is the colour of integrity and loyalty, and green is the colour of growth and balance. I began by creating a margin, I felt that 1/4 of the page was adequate, after creating a dividing line I brought the section inwards to make room for a margin around the page. Once this was correctly proportioned I began adding in title blocks and example text, at this point the framework started to take shape. The next creative things to add were the icons. I found a free retina icon pack online (here) and started to adapt the selected ones to fit my theme. I changed their colour and added a circle icon behind. I made sure they had equal spacing and began positioning them within the margin. Half way through I realised my grids / ruler lines got out of control.
Next was to add the important stuff! I was stuck for my profile as I wanted to make it original yet bursting with strong positive information about myself as a designer. I did not want the cliche ‘my name is..i’m a graphic designer..’ and so by having my name and profession as the page header it shows my creative ability in the simplest form. In the margin I decided to add short bits of information such as my website, contact details and location. I also recreated my cover letter for an example company. The cover letter follows my résumé layout and continues the top margin line in which the company’s address details sits above, to separate it from my own. I am happy with how they have turned out – I will get feedback on them Thursday.
Ben Walton 
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