Final Poster Design

Before beginning our poster design, we began by looking at the egg label we had created and we discussed the different points that we should focus on when talking about marketing tricks. In our final poster we wanted to pick out some of these points and talk about them, writing about the truth behind them and how the marketers spin words to make the consumers feel more comfortable.

After discussing all of the points we wanted to include I began designing the final design using Illustrator. I wanted to include the reference to vintage American advertising but keep it subtle, to enhance the satirical nature of our design. I began experimenting with the typography for the heading. For the colour scheme I wanted to keep it simple and limited, using only a beige, dark green and red. I found the original coloured background was too plain and I didn’t like the way the text sat on it and so I overlaid a texture to give some depth and feel to the poster.

Before including them on my poster, we discussed the points we wanted to look at and figured out what we wanted to write on the poster in separate paragraphs:

“The lion mark guarantees that the eggs were laid in Britain. This only helps to meet the food safety criteria, not on the condition of the farms that the hens are brought up in.”

“This egg has been Photoshopped and treated with a chemical such as hairspray when taking a picture of the egg so make it look at its finest, with no scratches or cracks.”

“The impression of an egg being laid on hay on the label comforts the customer that the eggs are laid in a safe and healthy environment for hens, ensuring extra freshness also.”

“‘Free to roam’ may mean that the hens are allowed to walk about 2 feet apart from each other, and are probably allowed to go outside by going through a tiny hole in the side of the barn into a dirty field.”

“Although the title may say Farm Fresh, the illusion of a farm to customers may be a red barn with fields. An egg farm means a metal barn with one field they can roam around in during the day.”

“Around 16,000 hens can be in one barn, the idea of free-range means that they can go outside through a pop hole.”

“Hens in cramped conditions begin to peck each other and anything around them, loosing their feathers and developing diseases such as salmonella.”

The next step was to add in the egg box. I included a small drop shadow to make it fit onto the background better, as without it, it didn’t fit in and it just looked as though it had been stuck on. I then began arranging the text around the egg box, keeping the paragraphs of similar size and as in line as I could. As for the lines pointing to the box, I wanted to use vertical and diagonal lines, keeping the same angle on each one as I thought that having them set at different angles would look too messy and would not pull together well. I chose to use red lines to stand out from the image and background, and I chose to use a dotted line as I found it more interesting than a solid one.

This is our final poster design about ethics, I’m very pleased with how this has come out. I think this is a successful, strong piece of design and I think it discusses topics about ethics very well. I feel like we have taken quite a narrow approach to this piece, creating a piece about quite a specific topic rather than a broad piece covering all aspects of ethics. Because of this, we felt that this piece needed to be part of a series of posters, each one looking at a different aspect of ethics in design, which we have noted at the bottom of the poster.

Personally, I think that our group project was quite successful, and I think that we worked well together as a group. I feel as though we gelled quickly, and that everyone pulled their weight in the project. We each played to our strengths, and we didn’t really encounter any issues as a group. I think this shows in our development and in the design, and I think that it has made for a strong, successful project that fulfils the brief.

Infographics & Inspiration

Although they seem like quite a modern thing, infographics have been around for a lot longer than I realised, even as early as Florence Nightingale who used them to show the queen the state of conditions in hospitals, showing the number of deaths each month during the Crimean War. This was a hugely effective piece of infographics, because the use of a pie chart mixed with bars shows the correlation of the time in comparison to the number of deaths occurring.

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Before moving on to create our own infographic poster, I decided to look at some existing ones to gather some ideas about what is often included and some of the styles used in them. The styles and designs of infographics varies massively, with some quite simple designs and some very complex ones. One thing I noticed is that a lot of the stronger ones work because the imagery is the main focus of the poster, with the text small and secondary to the visual side. This is something I will keep in mind in my own design as I don’t want the attention to be taken sway from the image and the audience be lost in a sea of text. Many of these designs have lots of figures and numbers, where many of them are showing graphs or charts. This obviously will not be the case with our design as it is more about the information and the message we are conveying, than about showing numbers and figures.

Two interesting infographics that we found were these, which talk about false advertising with food and about eggs in one of them. It was interesting to see how false advertising has been shown in this design where the ads and the reality have been compared. Some of the information about how food is added to when photographed to make it more appealing was also interesting and may be very helpful for when we design our own infographic.

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In my head when thinking about our design, I have been imagining it to have a slightly vintage look, similar to the sorts of adverts from the 30’s/40’s/50’s in America. With the design we are aiming at I think it will be quite satirical, showing a quite light hearted design but with very strong, serious undertones and messages. I feel like a style similar to this will help to enhance the satirical nature of our poster. I am concerned that using this may take away slightly from the message of the poster and so I want to make it quite subtle, with the use of the colours and the feel of the poster, but without making it too obvious.

The Egg Box

For our design of the egg box label, we began with a design that Peter had created here, mixing a pencil drawing with a softer background created digitally. I liked the idea of this design and it was something that we wanted to include in the final design. The egg on a bed of hay gives the consumer a sense of comfort that the eggs are cared for and also that the hens are treated well and live in good conditions. This technique is one often used on various egg boxes and so it is something we wanted to highlight in our design.

For the label, I wanted to isolate the egg and the hay, as I thought it would work better on its own without the blurred, digital background. Using Photoshop I took out the background and placed the pencil drawing on a plain background. I also wasn’t sure that the pencil drawing of the egg was as strong and so we decided to include a photograph of an actual egg in its place. I think that this makes the design much stronger as it puts a lot more focus on the egg itself. Next I created the typography for the packaging. I looked at existing egg labels and took inspiration from the way that they use type to create my own. We had looked at different phrases that are often included on the packaging, and we decided to include ‘Farm Fresh’ on the label. This term again gives comfort to the consumer as it suggests a nice farm where the hens have lots of space and freedom, although this is often not the case. I wanted to keep the text quite simple and uniform, as I didn’t want to take the focus away from the imagery and also this uniform layout of the text means that it can be placed in other places where it is almost like a logo.

This is the final design for our fictional egg box label. I designed the top and also the label at the front as we wanted to show the egg box on the poster at an angle and so both the top and the front of the box will be visible. After getting the basic layout with the image and the typography ready, I then added the extra details such as nutritional information, the British Lion logo, and a small caption taken from an existing egg box.

On the front label I made sure to plan out where the hole in the box was for the latch, making sure not to put any important parts inside it as they would be lost. We also decided to include a small silhouette of a healthy looking hen, much like what is included on many existing labels. This helps to comfort the consumer and suggest that the hens used to lay the eggs were healthy and treated well, encouraging the consumer to buy the product.

After finalising the design for our egg label, I sent the design over to Emily who used Photoshop to digitally attach it to an my image of an egg box. Using the perspective and warp tools she has managed to change the angle of the label and almost seamlessly mount it onto the packaging. I think this has been done very well and I think  it is a successful design, clearly showing all of the marketing tricks that we wanted to highlight in our design.

Egg Boxes

After coming to a more solid idea for out poster design and deciding to use an egg box as our packaging example, we started to think about layouts and design styles that we wanted to use. We came up with some initial sketches for the poster and the actual layout of the egg box that we would include on the poster.

Photo by Emily Alldis

Photo by Emily Alldis

Photo by Emily Alldis

Photo by Jacob Smith

Photo by Jacob Smith

Photo by Jacob Smith

To be safe from any copyright issues and to make sure the packaging had everything we wanted on it easily visible, we decided to create our own egg box label that we would mount onto a blank box and use in our poster. To gather ideas and to make sure we knew what we needed to include on the label, we went and looked at existing egg boxes that we had at home. I found that they are quite simple and clearly state the kind of eggs they are and what kind of farm they were sourced from. also clearly visible is the British Lion logo to state that they are sourced from Britain. One thing we noticed about the labels is that they included silhouettes of healthy looking hens. This simple addition makes the consumer more comfortable about the product as it suggests that the hens laying the eggs were healthy and happy, even though their conditions were probably quite poor.

I think looking at these different egg labels was very helpful as it definitely gave us a clearer idea of what to include on our own label design. I think it also helped in our understanding of the issue we are tackling, as after researching all of the quite shocking information about egg farming, it is interesting to then look at the packaging for these eggs and see how they are marketed to give the consumer as much comfort as possible.

Eggs

For our poster idea, we needed an example of food packaging that could potentially show lots of fall information about the product. We considered a few ideas before deciding on eggs. We chose this as there has always been lots of controversy about egg farming and the quality of lifer for the chickens. For an infographic, obviously we would need a range of information and facts to use, and so I have researched into the background of egg farming, the different types of farms and some of the figures that may shock much of the public who don’t necessarily know where their eggs are originating.

Battery Cages
Made out of thin wire with a sloping mesh floor and often stacked 10 tiers high, a cage typically measures 50 x 55cm and houses five birds.  EU laws state that a minimum of 550cm² is allowed per bird; less than the size of an A4 sheet.  The average wing span of a hen is 76cm; the cages are so small that the hens will never be able to stretch their wings, raise their heads properly, nest or perform other normal chicken behaviours like preening or scratching properly.  The sloping wire floor can damage feet and claws and restricted movement can result in fragile and often broken bones as well as frustration and aggression.  And in such close confines hens cannot escape aggression from other hens.

Enriched Cages
Conventional battery cages were officially banned in 2012, however ‘enriched’ cages are still allowed to be used. These cages provide just 50cm² of extra usable area per bird and limited facilities. The RSPCA believes these still fail to properly cater for the hen’s physical and behavioural needs and impose severe restrictions on movement.

Barn Systems
Barns allow the hens to roam freely inside uncaged, have perches to roost on and space to stretch their wings. Nesting boxes provide a quiet place for egg-laying and there is floor litter for scratching in.  Multi-tier barns provide additional levels above ground for the hens to explore. Whilst this provides more room for the birds to move, these barns are often filthy, dingy and cramped, with some barns housing up to 16,000 birds. The term ‘barn’ gives a more appealing sense to the consumer, allowing them to believe that the barns are nice, light places for the hens, but they will barely see daylight or breathe fresh air and are still denied real freedom.

Free-Range
Most free-range hens on commercial farms live in buildings like the barn system, but have access to the outside through openings called ‘popholes’. EU laws require that free-range hens must always have access to an outside area with adequate vegetation during the daytime.

Fortunately, consumer power over the last few years has had a great effect on what is offered on the supermarket shelves.  Several supermarkets including Waitrose, The co-operative, M&S and Sainsbury’s have banned caged eggs from their shelves.  Overall the proportion of eggs from caged hens is down from 80% to 50% in the last 12 years – but that still means about 17 million hens in the UK are kept in cages.

I wanted to look further into facts about this topic and I found some interesting, and quite shocking figures about where eggs come from and the treatment of the hens:

•  Around 36 million commercial egg laying hens were kept in the UK in 2013.
• In the UK the proportion of eggs produced in the different systems in 2013 was:
  • 51 per cent* of eggs produced in battery cages
  • 3 per cent* in barn systems
  • 46 per cent* in free-range systems (of which 2 per cent were organic systems).
• Consumers are buying more boxes of free range and barn eggs, but 60 per cent of eggs used as ingredients in products like mayonnaise, cakes and sandwiches are still from hens kept in cages.
• UK laying hens currently produces around 10,000 million eggs. In the UK, the average consumer eats 170 eggs per year

The UK has a range of various Quality Assurance standards for for, often used on eggs. Below I have included some and what they mean for animal welfare:

Sources:
http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/layinghens/farming
http://www.animalaid.org.uk/h/n/CAMPAIGNS/factory/ALL/578/
http://www.freedomfood.co.uk/wheretobuy/egg-guide
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/your-food/know-your-labels

An Interesting Idea

After some research into false advertising and marketing of food, Peter sketched out this idea for a potential poster design, which I really like and I think was received well by the group. With inspiration taken from the video below, the idea is to show an example of food packaging showing the truthful information about the product e.g. ‘may contain hormones/antibiotics’. Then underneath will be the shiny, finished packaging with the dishonest labels the marketers use such as ‘Natural’. I think this is quite a strong idea, and can be played off as quite a satirical design, focusing the idea on ‘How to be a professional designer’.

In my head when I visualise this idea, I have the thought of vintage, 1930’s-60’s advertising in mind. I think the upbeat, optimistic nature of these advertising styles will reenforce the satirical nature of our poster, and I also think it will create a very exciting, unique infographic. The next step for the group from here is to look into different packaging examples and facts about false marketing that we can include in the poster. We also need to look into styles that we can take inspiration from to create the most exciting poster we can.

11 Ways Advertisers Make Food Look Delicious

Through researching various ethical issues to do with false advertising, one major aspect that kept arising was to do with false marketing within food. Most people are aware that companies with not be entirely truthful on the packaging about the contents or background of their product. Although many people are not as aware as they perhaps should be. One aspect, however, that even I was not aware of was the way that some brands will alter or add to the product when photographing it to make it look more appealing than it is. Many of these will be to promote unhealthy food, or food that doesn’t look too appetising, to make it look much more desirable to the consumer. Some of these examples I found to be quite shocking:

1) Glue – Or yoghurt/shampoo to make it look nice and glossy instead of soggy.

2) Sponges, Cotton Balls & Tampons – To make hot food steaming, they embed these into foods after heating them up to allow steam through.

3) A Blow Torch, a Branding Iron & Some Shoe Polish – Just slap on some raw meat and cook only the parts needed to stop the meat going flat…

4) Cardboard & Toothpicks – Think of a hamburger… Now think of it layered with cardboard and toothpicks to give it the height and stability it needs for that show stopping advert.

5) Motor Oil & Some Fabric Protector – To give those runny flapjacks a little more shine.

6) Hairspray and Spray on Deodorant – You always buy those grapes and blueberries from the market that have a matte look on them(?)

7) Glycerin – This helps to give products the cold feeling such as the condensation on beers.

8) Paper Towels – What photographers do here is cut out sheets and stick them (for example) on top of ice cream to drizzle sauce over. This stops the sauce running down the ice cream to the bottom of the bowl to form a soup.

9) The food that makes other foods look good – Mashed potatoes. This food can be used for stuffing meats, ice creams and all other ‘models’ of foods.

10) Antacid & Soap Bubbles – This creates a larger surface area of bubbles in fizzy drinks to make them more appealing.

11) Tweezers – This would be used to add the most pathetic details such as the seeds on top of a burger bun! Tweezers are used for assembling foods in dishes in a certain way and sometimes the objects are glued together.

There are a lot of opinions about the ethics of food advertising, although many people do not know the extremes that brands will go to to make their average foods seem like it was made by someone from a top restaurant. All of this promotes the complete wrong idea of food and nutrition, tricking not just young children, but grown adults also.

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30195/11-ways-advertisers-make-food-look-delicious

Initial Thoughts

In our group of three (Emily, Peter and myself) we sat down together and brainstormed some initial ideas about topics we could focus on. We kept in mind the idea of ethics specifically for designers, although found it quite difficult as many of the possible topics were more based around the marketers or the brands themselves. Some ideas that we talked about included

• Briefs going against personal ethics/morals (e.g. brands known for animal cruelty)
• The environment and wastage as a designer
• False advertising/misleading information
• Planned Obsolescence (products designed to fail to make the consumer buy more)
• Target Audience, race and gender

Originally we liked the idea of looking into planned obsolescence, but also we wanted to look at false advertising within topics such as food or fashion. This two subjects can interlink and  I think that it makes these two subjects interesting ones to look into. I feel there is a lot to look at within these topics and I think there is potential for a beautiful infographic.

This infographic I have found shows a lot of information about planned obsolescence and how long various different products are designed to last. It takes a lot of technology, as these products are most renowned for being designed to fail. It then compares them with different food products, showing how much longer food can last. I think that this is an excellent infographic as it shows the information clearly and in an interesting, unique style.

As a group, we have set up our own private Facebook page whereby we can communicate with each other and post ideas and research points for the three of us to look at and discuss. We also have arranged a time schedule with a list of things to be done and when they need to be done by. By doing this we will hopefully be able to stay organised and keep on track about what we need to be doing as a group.

Image Source: http://live.orange.com/en/lobsolescence-un-parfum-de-solidarite/

David McCandless

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zg-C8AAIGg David McCandless is a London based author, data-journalist and information designer, working across print, advertising, TV and web. Most notably, McCandless has been exploring data visualisation and infographics and how they can be used in journalism and to discover new stories in the swarms of data that exists in the world. McCandless is renowned for his info graphics, whereby he takes various data and transforms it into beautifully crafted charts and arrangements. This well designed visualisation of data, I think, is very exciting and often makes the data much easier to comprehend. Some people argue that the use of beautiful infographics takes away from the harshness of the data and the facts by almost sugar coating it. However I believe that it is often the opposite that is true.

One of McCandless’ best known infographics is the Billion Dollar-o-gram (above). I think this is an excellent example of an infographic having more of an impact than just the raw data itself. It shows the global financial status and expenditure. Just written down, these figures would have little impact as it takes a lot of thought to hold these figures together in comparison. However, in this graphic, the figures are shown as boxes, allowing the audience to immediately see the size differences between the figures, and allowing them to have a much greater impact. It is far easier to understand the data this way and I think it definitely creates a hard hitting message, all inside a very beautifully designed infographic.

Personally, I really like McCandless’ work, and I think his infographics are successful, exciting and also useful. I love his simplified style and the way he condenses the information down to its simplest, most easily read form. His work takes a lot of, possibly quite boring, data and turns it into something beautiful and inviting, often making me want to read more into it. Much of his work has also had a large impact on me, not just because it is beautifully designed, but also because I can immediately understand what the graphic is showing, and I can take in that information and process it much more easily this way.

Source:
http://www.davidmccandless.com
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net