OUGD401 - Practical Research Project - Initial Ideas

I went straight to digital when working on my neutral brand identity which I don’t usually do but I felt it would be easier to play around with type  and colour.

I was very much inspired by the Chocolate editions packaging which is very simple - just white packaging with sans serif lettering. I also used a see through window to the chocolate to give it the colour and interest. I thought that I could call it “Honest chocolate” because the packaging, being neutral, is honest to the value of the chocolate and it’s fooling you into buying it. Playing on this “no fooling” idea I thought I’d add the tag line of ‘for pleasure only’ suggesting that you only eat chocolate for fun as it isn’t really a food you would eat for a main meal.

I also tried the packaging in a serif font but I feel that this doesn’t work at all as serifs do imply quality and luxury, which I am not at all trying to portray. I took these 2 designs to a critique and was told that because they were so neutral, they wouldn’t sell the product at all. Deeming the point of having packaging on a product useless. If I wanted to brand chocolate as ‘neutral’ I would probably have to sell it unpackaged. 

So I tried to think of products within society that lacks value and quality and the thing that came to mind was prescription medicinal packaging. Unlike other packaging, medicines from prescriptions usually have  limited colour schemes and only include information that is essential and nothing persuasive or playing on the senses. It is simple and to the point and in my opinion neutral. 

So I tried to design chocolate as if it was medicine, something that you would eat if you were stressed or sad. I played on this by using “for relief of” and a list of ‘symptoms’ that it could help. I also tried to use a gender neutral colour, orange, just to add a bit more interest to the design.

I changed around the layout to the second design and I feel that this works much better. It is very similar to the Imagintol packaging that I found and this layout just works really well. I do very much like this idea of chocolate being honest in the sense that you are selling it for what people really eat it for. It adds a humorous touch which I think would relate with a lot of people (mostly women). 

OUGD401 - Study Task 4 - Research Project Proposal

The question that I will base my research on will be "What is the relationship between branding and consumers and their perception of quality?" As I want to explore the difference between how people perceive luxury brands and low budget brands. Is it just down to class? Or is it something more than this.

While doing a case study for my essay I found that people could not taste the difference between expensive and cheap chocolates while blindfolded which interested me a lot when compared to when people used the packaging as a reference to perceive the chocolates value. I plan to use the primary results that I found within my research project to back up my design decisions. I will also explore other products currently on the market to see if there are any products that do what I want to do already.

I plan to prove that there could be perhaps a neutral product that one could not tell the value of. Therefore I want to create packaging for a bar of chocolate that is said to be 'class-less'. Also I want to use both primary and secondary research to see what different class systems of society prefer brand wise, maybe even compare the costs that they are willing to spend in order to determine a 'neutral value'.

Below I have included a gantt chart of what I plan to do within the time that we have been given to complete my project.

OUGD401 - Practice-Based Research

In this session we learned about practice based research which is a form of research methodology that uses practice alongside other forms, as a means of discovering or generating knowledge. While the emphasis is still very much on establishing a critical understanding of the issue, practice-based research acknowledges the role of “making” in establishing this understanding.

We had to decide what our topic included based on 3 pointers - Technique, Content and Communication. So I decided to generalise branding as this was the main focus of my essay and the essay question as well.

Technique (What techniques does branding use) -

• Emotional responses - customers view of morality (right/wrong)
• Persuasive language - makes you think you need something rather than just want it
• Taglines - made to be memorable
• Naming - brand names are often created through word association
• Rhetoric Questions - to connect with the consumer
• Promotional Materials - Brands often give out freebies or discounts to encourage more purchases.

Content (What content does branding use) -

• Logotypes - Almost every brand has a logo that is used with everything - it gives the brand a face.
• Illustrations - Illustrations could be used within packaging, advertising or even the brand itself.
• Imagery - Images of the product and or happy people with the brand to make it seem reliable/trustworthy.
• Colours - based on a target audience
• Typography - Once again choices are based on the target audience and the image that the brand wants to create of itself.
• Packaging - To encapsulate a product and link it back to the brand

Communication (How do brands communicate with customers?) -

• Subliminal messages - Sometimes subliminal messages are used to lure in customers
• Shops - Creating staff to customer contact
• Offers/Sales - to boost business at quiet times in the year
• Letters/Leaflets - To advertise the brand/promote its services
• Email  - Brands often use emails in a similar way to letters and leaflets
• Advertising - Advertisements can be anywhere - online, on the TV, on billboards and posters.
• Social Media - In this age social media is used by brands to advertise themselves

Next we had to look at how to engage with different aspects of practice based research that was split into 3 different areas.

Research/Analysis - I plan to research some contemporary branding techniques and try to decide which will be the most effective through analysis. I will also research class systems to see the price of value for each class. So I will look into brand communication and how brands communicate to the different classes of customers.

Exploration/Evaluation - I will look at what messages I have learnt from my essay and use them to communicate a specific message. Additionally I will explore branding methods in modern day society and perhaps how it has changed over the past decade. While doing this I will constantly evaluate each brand I explore and ask why is it successful, particularly looking at the tone of voice used, the logo and marketing.

Testing - I will try to get some primary research here by asking random people to describe my outcome or even to analyse how effective it is.

OUGD401 - Practical research

After doing my case study on chocolate I became really interested in how the packaging makes consumers perceive the value of the product rather than the taste. I thought that I could perhaps rebrand Aldi's Moser Roth chocolate to look more expensive or even make a brand neutral chocolate that should show no value within the packaging. 

Chocolate Packaging Research

I found a book in the library that contains lots of different food packaging designs so I looked through to find some interesting chocolate packaging. 

I really like the idea of having a see through section in the packaging like with this 'Eat Me' bar. It lets the consumer see what they are buying, similar to when consumers bought things in local shops before branding took over. I also think that the super minimal packaging works well with this cut out. There is no ornamentation - just the facts and the chocolate. From looking at this I wouldn't be able to tell what value this bar of chocolate would have.

Once again within this design the focus is all of the chocolate rather than the design of the packaging. The white packaging with a black sans serif font creates a neutral effect where you don't know what the value of this bar of chocolate would be. This could have been designed this way as the chocolate itself is designed in a pie chart so it could reflect the straight to the point nature of charts. 

This is definitely a product that is advertised to be a bit more exclusive and expensive than most brands. You can tell from the mixture of textures and use of white on black making the packaging look expensive to produce. It is also advertising very dark chocolate, this might be the main reason behind the darker looking packaging. 

I really love this idea of designing the packaging as if the product was drugs as most people do eat chocolate for a sort of pick me up. The use of bold colours against the white is very effective at selling to us that this is a drugs package. I also like how the sweets are presented in a little foil bag so the size, shape and taste of the sweets are a mystery until you open them.