OUGD602 - PPP - One Day Brief with Something More

Steven and John from Something More came in to brief us on a one day brief. The brief turned out to be to design a Children's cereal brand by the end of the day and then present it. The aim of the cereal had to be to stop children from eating junk food. We got into groups and started pretty quickly. The fun thing about the day was that they had a spinner which would throw up new problems (or solutions) into the brief like would happen in the real world with clients.

We started by creating lots and lots of mind maps on the topic. The first one we did was to decide what children would want within a brand/product. We decided on a more specific age range of 4-9 year olds as we feel that they still rely on what their parents put in front of them and need a nutritious start to the day.

 

The second was what kind of cereal kids already eat and trying to narrow it down to the more healthy ones.

We narrowed down our ideas to either porridge or shredded wheat as we thought these had the most scope as healthy cereals while still being able to add things to appease childrens' sweet tooth. But we discussed this more and decided that porridge was much healthier and there were more things that could be added to porridge than could be added to shredded wheat.

So then it was time to decide on a brand name. We wanted to play on the word Porridge or Oats so we brainstormed animals and names that began with P or O. The one that really stood out to us and had a nice ring to it was Otter Oats. We thought that otters were cute and cuddly and would appeal to our age range of 4-9 year olds. 

Next we decided to vote on some flavours for our porridges. We thought that we could create flavoured porridges and separate topper packets to mix and match flavours. The porridge flavours we decided on were banana, cocoa and honey so we have a mix for children to choose from. 

Finally, we mindmapped words and values to go with our new brand, Otter Oats. This helped us create a vision for the brand and a direction to go down with the branding.

The first spin of the spinner revealed that there was more room in the budget for everyone so we also had to create a concept for an on the go version of the cereal. Each group then had to spin the wheel for their own problem and unfortunately ours was to create a logo by 12pm.

This became a problem when we were asked to stop everything we were doing and come up with a travel card for Leeds in 30 minutes and we were not allowed to work on our cereal branding. Having been attending my print slot I came back 5 minutes into this part of the brief.

All we had to do was come up with a concept and logo if we had time. However we wanted to really push ourselves and create the card itself. The group wanted to do something based around an Owl because it is in the crest of the city of Leeds. However it quickly became clear that quite a few other groups had this idea. So we thought of what you think of when you think of cities. A trade off I suggested was the pigeon, because as everyone will know they're everywhere. And while all people may not like pigeons, they were pivotal being used as messengers throughout the war. So we took this concept of a messenger, delivering things back and forth and called our card "my messenger". This insinuates the constant travelling and commuting owners of the travel card would be doing. The design we created for it was very simple, taking the colour scheme from the plumage of a pigeon. The use of the pigeon in flight emphasises the travel aspect while relating the name back to its source.

By the time we were finished with the travel card our time was up for the logo design. Though we would have all liked more time to refine the logo I think we were pleased with the simplicity of what was created, using the ears of the otter on the 'O'. The bold serif that is used is very approachable and friendly looking while the positioning of the text adds a playfulness to the logo. 

Now we weren't allowed to make any alterations to the logo we decided to start designing the cereal boxes, topper bags and the on-the-go packet. We allocated roles for ourselves so that we could get it all done within the time limit. I chose to do the cereal box design, Vedika chose the topper packet, Laura chose to do the on the go design and Becky chose to do the supporting ads, puzzles and web design. 

I started by sketching my box ideas. I started by sketching out the characters as we decided we would have them on each flavour box so that was the priority so everyone could have the same illustrations on the boxes. I sketched the characters then made Oscar, the main otter, in Illustrator.

I tried to make Oscar look as friendly as possible within the time given. I think he looks very cute and friendly, which will hopefully appeal to our target audience. I didn't have time to make the other two characters, Olive and Oswald the baby however.

Then we were hit with another spin of the wheel which revealed that due to new regulations we were not allowed to use cardboard. So all of my ideas for cereal boxes were now invalid. We decided to go for a resealable pouch instead, like what we were already using for the topping bag. 

This was my final design for the bag, before I put it onto the mock up. I wanted the bow tie to be see through to show the contents of the bag. Using the otter's natural environment is really successful I feel, making him seem at home. 

The end was a bit of a rush because they span the wheel again and we got an hour less time before we had to present. So we put everything onto slides and presented our idea to the group.

Here is the final packaging I did with Vedika's topping packet. I had to change around the design so it would fit correctly on the bag, mainly so the logo wouldn't be on the tear off section. Overall I was really happy with our design and even though we didn't win the feedback that we received from Something More was that they could see our product on the shelves in Waitrose. This is very promising considering we knocked out all of the designs and concept within 4 hours.