OUGD603 / Extended practice - Brrew Iced tea: Design development.

OUGD603.

BRREW ICED TEA.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT.

I took the preferred logo into illustrator and began playing around and trying out ideas, I had previously been influenced by Yorkshire tea, as it is a tea brand rooted and heavily influenced in its Yorkshire surroundings.

However I wanted Brrew to have a contemporary feel, cold brewing tea is a new product on the UK market, and I want it to appeal to a younger market. The aesthetic needs to be contemporary and refreshing. Below I have taken an image that I found when looking at landscape illustrations. I think it has a great fun and youthful feel, and will represent the product in a creative and refreshing way, and will be relative with its audience. 

I started to play around with different type variations, But what I really wanted to do was try and come up with a successful colour combination. I instantly started playing around with blue as this is the colour that is commonly associated with cold, as it is cool toned.  

I also tried playing around with illustratuve elements on the label to tie it together with the background by taking an element commonly seen in British landscapes.

I also tried this label idea with the alternative logo in which there are icecles hanging from the word Brrew. I wanted to exaggerate the idea of Iced tea, as I didn't want customers to pick up the brand mistaking it for just another tea brand. 

Following this idea, instead of colouring the background illustration in natural colours of the landscape, I further played with blue. 

I mocked up a potential box to see what the design so far would look like in context. I felt that the trees contributed too much towards an alternate landscape and didn't when in context, particularly reference anything about celebrating yorkshire and so I deleted these from the design. 

I started looking at the possibility of integrating different colours into the design to nod towards the different flavours, I looked at the idea of contrasting a colour linked to the flavour such as berry, for the raspberry flavour and conflicting this with natural colours found in landscapes. 

After experimenting with some possible ideas, I went back to the drawing board and worked out what would be the best shape and size for the packaging. When considering shape, I looked back at my visit to the supermarket and tried to consider which was the most functional shape in terms of living on the shelf and living in the customers home. I found that the most functional shape to stack on shelves and in a customers cupboard would be a box in which all sides are flat. However I also wanted to design the box as something customers would like to keep on display. I tried to focus on the ratio of teabags to box size, and found that the best size for the box would be 90mm x 120mm.

I further looked into the fuctionality of the box in terms of how the customer would interact with it. How would the box open? How would the customer take the teabags out of the box? What would be the easiest way to do so, whilst trying to affect the design as little as possible, so that it would still look great on display in the home?

I looked at how some other brands had thought about functionality for their users:

Yorkshire tea has a few solutions, one of their pieces of packaging has a perforated lid so that It can be torn open at the top allowing easy access to the product, however it can also be closed shut as well. Another outcome is the special tin packaging in which once the product has been purchased it can be constantly placed into the tin, which can then be refilled. However as a new product, I wanted to keep the idea simple at first, with the ability to expand further to a design such as this. 

I found a design on the blog site Lovely Package which offered a very functional solution for users to easily pull out the teabags. The packaging features a perforated section at the bottom of the box in which can be torn away. As a teabag is pulled out of the bottom of the box, a new one drops down in its place. 

With the shape, dimensions and function of the box solved I moved back to looking at the design of the box. At this point I wasn't particularly happy with the design experiments I had done previously, I went back and worked with the logo, as I didn't feel that I had fully resolved it to its best potential.  

I felt that the use of icicles was too cliche in trying to state that the tea was infact ice tea, and so I looked for other ways to comunicate this. I started playing around in illustrator with simple symbols that would comunicate the idea of cold, tea, and fruits. 

I made the symbols into a simple pattern which I placed both above and below the name of the product. 

I also had a play round with changing the colours of the symbols to reflect the pallet of colours used across the entire box however I felt that it made the brand stand out less and therefore gave it a weeker image. 

It was also suggested that I should play with the lettering giving it more character. I experimented with the angle and placement of the letters to see if I could echo the visual  of the letters shuddering as if they, themselves were cold. There were two different variations I played with (above and belo) However I felt that they made the logo look quite cluttered, and so I reverted back to the original design. 

Original design:

I also thought about the idea of creating a shortened logo that could be used in other places such as on the top of the box. To do this I took the first letter of the name of the product and placed it into the same pattern altering it slightly to adhere to the shortened initial. 

I placed what I have done so far in terms of logo design into my box net.

I then began implementing the temporary illustration and playing with colours to gather what colour combination would work well together. I did this by alternating the colours from the pallet of 5 i had chosen. 

I felt that out of the two I tried using the darkest colour alongside the illustration was definitely the most successful. It stood out the most and has a much stronger aesthetic thsn the previous, meaning it would appear more visible in the supermarket when placed alongside other brands.  

With a strong aesthetic decided upon, I started to plan out how information would be displayed on the box. When looking at other packaging at the supermarket, I found that there were 7/8 main points on each box.

1. An introduction to the brand.
2. Information about the product.
3. How to use the product for the best result. 

4. The ingredients.
5. What customers should do if they are not happy with the product.
6. Extra benefits of the product such as Rainforest alliance etc.
7. The best before date.

8. How to best store the product. 

I drew up some ideas of how to order the information, and what kind of information this would include, this is only a template of the kind of information that would be found on the box as this, in reality would be provided by both the company and potentially a copy writer. 

I have structured the information in terms of heirarchy. What is best for the customer to read as soon as they look at the back of the box.

I kept the design/ layout of all the information simple, using the already existing pallet of colours, and fonts that I had chosen for the front of the box. 

To separate any confusion from how regular tea is made and how Iced tea is made I wanted to keep the diagram of how the drink is made very simple. The process involves 3 clear steps. 

Information that is used less so to persuade the customer into a purchase is placed on the bottom of the box, also in a very clear arrangement. 

I am very pleased with the progress of the packaging so far and feel that everything is beggining to link together nicely.  However, I feet that it could be improved. Although the plain sides will allow the illustration on the front and back of the packaging to stand out, they also leave something to be desired, however I do not want to carry on the pattern around both sides as the contrast in plain and patterned makes the packaging striking. 

Instead I took the shortened logo, filled it in the lightest colour and lowered the opacity so that it appeared faintly against the dark background, I positioned this on both sides of the box, as to make the product more recognisable from the side by its logo.   

I continued to think about how I could make the box even more appealing and striking. I wwanted to try and bring in contrast somehow but I didn't want to disrupt the pallet of colours, solely complement it. I looked to the logo, where I thought about creating a contrast between the illustration symbols and the wording/ letter in the centre. However I needed to think of a way in which I could do this that would complement a full set of colours, bearing in mind the other flavours in the collection are peach, lemon and regular tea. Therefore, peach, yellow and browns. 

The way I thought that I could do this was through foil. 

I experimented in illustrator with the idea of gold or silver. I felt that concept wise silver would be best as this has cooler base tones and would not more towards the idea of something being cold. However I felt that this would not be very complementary to the other colours in the collection and therefore I will test out the gold.