Project concepting stage considered multiple projects, however, there was a reoccurring idea around the arts and exhibitions, due to my background in Fine Art. I decided ultimately to experiment further afield and during this time period I had gone to a café and got frustrated due to the cross contamination that was inevitable due to the process in cafe's and takeaways - as their straws were pasta. This inspired me to create a brand that only had gluten free products. This would result in 0 cross contamination as there is nothing to contaminate the area.
Exploring this idea further I decided while gluten free needed to be everything due to the nature of cross contamination, other factors, such as, egg & milk, could still be accessible on the menu and easy to order and understand. This is to prevent potential miscommunication between customers and chefs.
The online market for the Free From festival, this is showcasing brands that are free from gluten, dairy, and refined sugars.
I decided to look at this area to view how these brands presented themselves, an example is the 'All Good Pantry' as they had very clean and simple designs for their jars which I really like as it makes the product look more sleek and professional quality.
I decided to look at this vlog to analyse and understand how the physical market for the free from festival presented itself and the stands for the different brands.
I did like how they had small taster containers when testing samples of the products, this also helps with the cleanly feel and process.
Experiments for flow with the logo.
Considered something like a badger as the icon, due to their social interactions. However, I didn't feel like this was quite on brand and seemed very vague, as during the concepting I noticed that it could have been a negative space pint. Again though, this does not match the brand.
Perspective and lighting is completely off in this design mock-up, I also don't like how the blue accent is going downwards, it may have been more effective angled right. However, this angle from above would not work as the current angle is emphasising the angle of 'N'.
I didn't like the bowl style personally as I felt it was not accurate for what the brand is, in addition, the curves of the bowl make it look similar to a basket. Overall, this design would have been too confusing but I liked the wrapped text around it.
While I like the concept of the design above, I did not feel like it was appropriate for this particular brand. This is because the curves at the bottom gave a more Skincare/dentalcare appearance - due to the two toned curve design. This of course is not what I want to portray with the branding.
When showing this concept blindly to another person, they commented that it was a brand relating to water, or the ocean, due to the flowing nature. Going forward I decided to rename to 'Oakin', this is because 'when doing more sketches of 'Okin' not only did I keep misspelling it with an A, but Okin also enhanced the skincare misconception due to it only being one word off from being Skin.
I quite liked the flowing connection for the 'K' and thus tried to experiment on a new design, with a few different concepts of how the 'K' could be turned into an icon or a unique feature of 'Oakin'.
I liked the concept of the single linework but in practice it made the design look tacky and was too similar to the inspiration design.
Too flat and may be difficult to read at distances
Too bold, and loud, centre.
When testing the font, I was having difficulty making the bottom text curve so it was the right way up but follow the same pathway.
![Untitled-2 [Recovered]-01.png](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/ae4ec9_c98b986e95334aff963cd23c55623796~mv2.png/v1/crop/x_1094,y_1652,w_2392,h_2392/fill/w_210,h_210,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Untitled-2%20%5BRecovered%5D-01.png)
When concepting, I had an iteration of icons, where I was attempting to create a more abstract and flowing 'K', this is because I was attempting to do a single line in the design to make it seem clean but flowing.
Unfortunately, during the process I disliked a lot of the designs. The main reason was that it seemed like an incorrect bow, rather than an intentional flowing K. This was even more present when I attempted a digital version of the design. I then decided to take a step back and reconsider the design, as clearly this single line design had not been working.
I decided on renaming it from a "Restaurant & Takeaway" to "Lounge & Takeaway", this is because of the atmosphere I wanted to create. I wanted there to be access to the grab and go takeaways for breakfast and lunch.
However, I felt that the term "Restaurant" was overly formal as I wanted to prioritise experience and the relaxed. As a result I believe that lounge was more accurate, as while wine and cocktails would be available (as gluten free beer would be difficult to keep in stock at a reasonable price) some of the seating available will be standard tables, but there would also be lower seating available for a more relaxing atmosphere.
Pixabay, 2017
'Table on Wooden Plank'
Available from Pexels
Original sources images for the edited image below:
-
Remove plate napkins and spoons from the original wood photo
-
Remove marble background
Icon image concept
One of the first Ideas I had for the visuals that I was in agreement with through the course of the project, was that I really did not want to include a marble effect on the tables. This is because it is not a consistent colour, and may not initially reveal any stains where as a glossy table would be immediately obvious as there would not be a glossy shine on these dirty areas.
Below on the left is an original photo by myself of some home made gluten free sausage rolls on a wooden plater. I considered the wooden plate for the more lighter meals such as sausage rolls and wraps when eating in rather than takeaway. The image on the right is the final edited image of what the plate would look like on the wooden tables, however, I would have liked to perfect the image by making the wood slightly glossy. This would have been similar to the gloss you could see on the previous image of the sausage rolls.
Original image was photographed by Julie Aagaard (2019) it was called 'Vegetable Salad on Plate Near Hot Beverage' and it was a free to use image from Pexels. I decided to alter this image to represent Oakin, I adjusted the colours - including the napkin - to match the guideline colours. I then added the wood background and added shadows underneath to give a realistic effect.
While I was unable to finalise the interior of the menu for the project timescale, I have included a cover of what it may have looked like in this image.
Physical tests of the design ideas for the menu.
While in the previous mock-up the front cover of the menu became too busy from the décor - I wanted to keep the design simple and minimalistic to keep the 'clean' and sleek aesthetic when it would be on a tabletop.
I was also testing the height and decided that the most comfortable height was A5 with a Tri-fold as opposed to A4 full page. Not only is this because of it taking less space on the table top to give a more sleek design, but I did not want it to be too large as the menu would not initially have a large menu that would require a large space.
The less varied and extensive the menu and more refined and optimised the items on said menu ensures there would be less miss-communication on orders (from very similar orders with minor changes).
I quite liked this design but I was worried the subtext was too faint, but I do like the font style accented by the decor around the sign.
I decided to not goes with these as they seem much more like an ice-cream or confectionary shop instead of a lounge and takeaway. Thus this would be confusing and would not be representative of the brand.
Found a suitable style stall that also keeps food clean (prevents a lot of grabbing food) and displayed neatly. So I altered the colouring and edited the back to make a mockup on the style a stall at a Market/Festival would look like.
I did a similar fashion to the uniforms, as they are meant to be clean and smart yet still be friendly and welcoming. In hindsight I don't like the turquoise gradient but I do like the pop of green in the buttons.
Some interior design concepts, in the designs on the left I had considered the take away area being the light wood floored area, and lounge having much more richer colours of dark brown.
Rough sketch of some inspiration of a venue within Lincoln called 'Towers' which had an upstairs area that could watch people below and outside.
When adding elements of inspiration from Towers, I had misaligned and as such the view from upstairs would be of the kitchen. This means that the upstairs area would have needed to be reflected as to view main dining rather than kitchen.
Originally I liked the concept of the dot instead of lines, however, I found in practice it didn't match the theme I was trying to portray. Thus I decided to change the background to a dark brown wood texture.
To do this wooden texture I used the previously edited public domain image by Pixabay on Pexels to be a simple wooden background. I also rotated this 90 degrees so that the wood grain ran along side the book direction.
During the beginning of the Easter holidays, my Social media module ended up needing priority due to a contingency plan needing to be developed. This is because for that module I was working with a client, Ageing Without Children Lincolnshire.
The issue is however despite the previously agreed strategy and social media platforms, when it came to me posting content they decided to wait until they are ready to post content, this new timescale was estimated to be June. As this obviously was outside of the original arrangement I had to separate from this organisation and consider a new social media strategy, platform, etc. so that I had another project for the deadline and at least some analytics I could analysis. This was extremely poor time management on my own part, as I should have considered contingencies for if the AWOC organisation decided to pull away from the project.
This mismanagement caused an incomplete project for both of the modules, as the guidelines below are missing large elements of the presentation. Going forward I will be making sure that physical documentation of process is also catalogued online thus there is an easy record access of information of the process. As the contingency priority of the Social Media Module resulted in confusion on where resources were when working on the Oakin guideline book.
For the future summer project, I will make sure I have a platform with all of my resources organised and controlled in a singular location so this confusion does not occur, I would also be adding the image captions/credits at the same time to prevent backtracking to relocate the original link.
