Week 4: Recap.

This week has been the most fun thesis week to date. I took a few trips to Home Depot, covered my apartment in stain & paint, bought, photographed (then ate) food items, and spent most of my time away from the computer doing hands-on projects.

The work is starting to pile up each week as I work on new programs. I introduce something new each week, but the older work is still there and in need of refinements. In a few more weeks I will have more work than I can think of. Eventually I will need to put them on hold for the semester "break" to be sure my other class work does not suffer. This week my eye began twitching, it has not stopped for 5 days now. I wonder what interesting things will happen with my lack of sleep next week.

I am still refining my brand book, but am sort of on hold while I wait for the snow to go away and the farmers markets to open. I need to gather more images because I am using what I took last summer as place holders. When I went out last summer I had no idea what I may need, so I just took as many as I could. Now I have specific shots in mind and will go back out when the markets open.

I will continue to refine "celebrate" which is my Harvest Celebration event. But I am close to it being done enough to post "final" pictures. I stained the ticket box and painted the cover, but I keep thinking of more "what if's" and want to try one more thing out. So close to being done!

Last week the majority of my time was spent on "Eat", which is a eat-in area within City Farm. The meals are made from food grown in the building. The eatery is called Farm Food and resembles a backyard/garden. The floor is grass and the serving items relate to the "garden" concept. Guests will eat off picnic tables, will fill up their water glass from a watering can and will eat out of clay planting pots specially made for food. Forks and spoons will be garden tools made smaller for eating and the area will be decorated with tomato plants and living walls. The menu will change based on the season and the take-home items will be housed in pita bread, or recycled paper bags.

I did mock-ups this week, so the work I have is not detailed enough to post. I have a lot of refinements to do this week and hope to have the program mostly wrapped up by next week. (wrapped up just means it is more done, than not). Next week I will have a lot of eye candy to post.

Now onto refining, refining, refining.... then staining, painting, playing and eating what I photograph.

Wrapping up "Celebrate"

I spent a day at the beginning of the week fixing up a couple issues with my grid in my brand essence book and trying some variations on my image spreads. I want to keep going and try some more out, but I decided to walk away from it for now and my plan was to re-visit it toward the end of the week. Well, I am at the end of the week now and I am so far into refining my programs that I am finding it hard to pry myself away from them. Maybe tomorrow....

I went buck nutty on my "celebrate" program this week and it is almost done. I am designing elements for the " Fall Harvest Celebration", which includes a poster, invite, ticket, promotional CD and coloring book for edible art. Of course, I only had a few elements to begin with but it seems to be a trend that I keep making more work for myself as I go along. I can't help it though. I think adding the CD and line art for edible art is perfect to round out the program.

Tonight I plan to experiment with staining wood so I can see how to decorate the ticket for the celebration event. The ticket is a branded plate with utensils packaged in a wooden box, that guests would use to eat with at the event. I want to see if I can get the leaf texture stained into the wood by layering it around the negative space. I have some different leafs to cut out, tape onto the box and stain around. Fingers crossed it looks as good as what is in my head.


Tomorrow I plan to move onto refining the "Eat" program, which is the part of city farm that is a food court. I need to refine the menu and tables, and then begin the serving trays and take out packaging. 

I will have to wait till next week to refine the "educate" program, which is a monster of its own. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this thesis, but I don't care. I am having a lot of fun with it and so far, it is coming out awesome!

Good thing I have tomorrow off of work because I need to find some time to work on my other classes assignments. Coffee consumption is in my future.

Brand essence book

I spent some time yesterday researching brand essence books. I wanted to get a better idea of how different companies tell the story of their brand. I also wanted to see if I could get an idea for interesting layout or element ideas.

I gathered a bunch of inspirational pulls and drew a bunch of sketches of some simple, but different layouts. From what I found in my essence research, is that pairing photography with simple words that make up a message from page to page is effective and appeals to me. I also found that image-only spreads were interesting and a good pause for the eye, which is something Matt (my directed study advisor) said my book needed.

I am so happy I went and took so many nice pictures this past summer. I have a decent library of food and farmers market pictures to pull from. I do need to gather more this summer to be sure I have more than enough. I also am collecting images taken with my Mamiya, which gives the images an almost flat and older look, which fits in with my branding. This past weekend I took a few, so now I am waiting for my film to come back. I love that part!

I found I have not really explored the abstract ways to show my brand essence and I need to work on that. (community, love, happy, food-centered) So far I have taken it pretty literal, showing actual food and people. I will need to go back to my keywords and take new images that convey those words. I think it will be a nice pair with my food images.

Off to design more layout sketches.... but first here are a couple I finished yesterday.

Sample spread 1

Sample spread 2

Thoughts on my tagline... or lack thereof

I believe a brands identity should directly reflect what the brand actually is. Honestly. Just show the brand. Just advertise what is being sold. Don't lead me to believe that a car is going to make me some hot woman in a cute red dress. Really. If I buy that car, will I actually do my hair and makeup everyday and dress to the nines? I doubt it. 99% of the time my hair will scare a pack of wolves and my lack of makeup will show my true skin color (pale blue).

So when I began writing my laundry list of taglines, I was never happy. Every week or so I would change my mind and decide my current tagline was untrue. Not a good representation of all that City Farm is. Aside from making my tagline into a paragraph with many exciting exclamation points, I decided no tagline was the way to go.

Of course, this is one of my many "brilliant" ideas I have dreamed about, written down in the middle of the night and laughed at in the morning. I usually ask a million questions doubting the idea being any good, then put it aside.

Mock up of City Farm ad

So I thought, what if City Farm has a tagline that constantly evolves. Except the "tagline" is the ad concept. My idea came with one ad campaign, which will be a good way to showcase my promote program.

I will begin with "You are what you eat. Choose wisely". The ads will show a piece of food and list all that is good in it. (ex: banana, potassium). Then show a person and list how all those good things are in them. (implying the person ate a banana.) So the person is what they ate and it was energy and nutrients.

These ads will also extend into the store and be highlighted on the food, store signage and in the deli. So it is more than an ad. It is a celebration of that aspect of the brand.


pretty crappy mock up, but a visual to say the least.

Week 1

Sort of an older post from my AAU journal. I wish I could link the 2, but for now I will just copy them here.
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I spent a lot of time this weekend on my projects. I look back at the hours spend and I have no idea where the time went. I guess I have gotten lost in my work. I usually try and put my all into my work, but sometimes I don't have to work at it. I just enjoy the topic and it is easy.

Thesis is unique because it is a project of our own creation. It is so easy to toss everything else aside and put in more hours that I have, to work on my thesis. Catch me at week 7 or 8 and I will be tired and grumpy from all of this work. But ask me on my most crazy day and I will say it was worth it.

I love my topic and I sort of daydream of the day I may live in a city with a "City Farm". So I am literately making my dream, visually come true.

Sure to be a great semester.

Back in action

The spring semester is back in session. I am a couple days into week 2 and finally took some time to post my thoughts. I also have a journal set up in the online section of my school area, so I have been writing there.

I will copy my posts from there to here, but I want to keep everything here in order. Starting at the beginning, here are some images of my brand. Logos, type, colors, examples...

Company and city specific logo

Sample of the building and floor plans

Hand made typeface and color palate

Elements and textures