Study Eats: A Branding Exploration
The Intro
Showcase
In this short showcase I will outline and display the deliverables and applications that were designed for my Senior Capstone project in ARTGR 471 with Cheri Ure. It will be similar to a client briefing and it will explain some of my design process and my design choices.In addition, it will define the mission statement for Study Eats – the business I created for my Senior Capstone project. It will also show and detail my research for the project and describe how that research persuaded me to make my final project decision.
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Mission Statement
“Study Eats offers a unique experience for college students and young professionals, by providing the best healthy meal delivery.”
The Research
Ideation
I began my ideation by thinking about topics within Graphic Design that I am passionate about. Topics included 3D Modeling, animation, publication design, and brand identity.
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I eventually decided that I wanted to pursue a brand identity project. After deciding this, I began thinking about some local problems that a new business could solve. I found through research that a healthy-food delivery service would be beneficial to our university community. With this information in hand, I combined my want to do a branding identity project with the idea of starting a new delivery service.
Problem Analysis
Development
As food delivery services grow, the market becomes more and more competitive, and this effect is even worse in college towns.
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University students and young professionals are using meal delivery services more often than ever. However, most of these services simply deliver local restaurant food or fast food. These options are not always the most healthy.
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My research concluded that not many college students and young professionals have fast and healthy meal options. In addition to this problem, the same audience also does not have the option to have healthy food options delivered to them.
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Solution
The solution to the problem I have researched is to start a kitchen that creates health conscious meals that can be delivered to college students and young professionals.
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However, the overall goal of this Capstone project was to create a brand identity for the aforementioned food delivery service, not design the actual food service itself. The brand identity package will include the elements on the Solution Elements and Branding pages.
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With this project, the target audience will be college students and young professionals. Therefore, my solutions will need to be modern and include the use of technology. The goal of branding this new business is to attract brand new customers and retain their patronage.
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The Logo
Logomark
The solution to the problem I have researched is to start a kitchen that creates health conscious meals that can be delivered to college students and young professionals.
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However, the overall goal of this Capstone project was to create a brand identity for the aforementioned food delivery service, not design the actual food service itself. The brand identity package will include the elements on the Solution Elements and Branding pages.
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With this project, the target audience will be college students and young professionals. Therefore, my solutions will need to be modern and include the use of technology. The goal of branding this new business is to attract brand new customers and retain their patronage.
Typography
As far as the typography is concerned, I knew I wanted to use a font family that was made for display and web since those would be the places where the logo would be viewed the most. I also wanted a slightly geometric font and one that looked modern and relatively simple.
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I chose Red Hat Display from Google Fonts. I liked the four weight options it provides, which gives me plenty of room to establish a visual hierarchy with the typography. It is also free for commercial and personal use which was an absolute must-have for my Capstone project.
The Application
Mockup
From the beginning, I knew that with a project like this, I would need to design an application that allowed users to order quickly and efficiently. As with all User Experience and User Interface design projects, I needed to keep users interested in the app and make it easy to find the meals they wanted and order them.
I used a software program called Invision Studio to do my app page mockups. This software allowed me to actually set up small animations and page transitions within the app. After I had this set up, I could easily port the app prototype to a phone with the Invision app installed and run it like a published and fully working application.
Package Design
Organized
Initially when I was thinking about designing the packaging that the meals would be delivered in, I stuck with one color and I was adding titles to the packages that corresponded to what was inside. This method was not very economically friendly because some packages may not be used as much as others.
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Instead I chose to organize the packages by the type of food inside and signify this with color and icons. I also decided to leave a blank space with lines for the chef to write the meal on, making the packages more usable for a larger variety of meals. The four basic categories are fish, poultry, vegetarian, and beef/pork.
Branding Guidelines
Packaged
A branding guideline book is an important part of any branding package. It allows the client to have access to all the brand’s information regarding color, typography, and how the logo can be used. It can also describe how the brand was developed and serves as a good point of reference for any designers that may need to work with the brand in the future.
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I designed the Study Eats branding guide book with simplicity in mind. I used the colors of the brand through out to make it fit with the brand and I decided to keep it image focused to describe how the brand is supposed
to look. Small amounts of text are also included to help clearly describe
the brand and its rules.
Giveaway Materials
Stickers
My original plan for giveaway materials during the Senior Exhibition was to print out stickers and use them to seal the meal packages. I was also going to use the stickers to seal small single-packages of cookies to hand out to people.
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The stickers were a good method for spreading awareness and publicity for my project during the exhibition. Unfortunately, our Senior Show was cancelled and moved to an online format, but I still have the designs to show and talk about.
