wild thing

An important piece of design– particularly portfolio design– is communication and storytelling. It helps to see how hollywood executes storytelling, boil down those key elements, and translsate them to my own design work.

Last weekend I went to see "Where the Wild Things Are". It was an interesting movie– There wasn't much plot, but there were a lot of underlying issues and it had well-developed characters. I felt so attached to them. I liked it! If you enjoy feeding your imagination, you should watch it too. The trailer alone even tells a story.

You can tell that this is a story about a boy who longs for adventure. We see the ways that he fills this void in his life. The Wild Things are the ones who bring his imagination to life. There isn't much dialogue in this trailer, but it still communicates a strong message. It's stated best near the end: "inside all of us is a wild thing". Enjoy!

brand identity

Brands are huge. I used to fight it, but more and more I realize how attached we are to brands. We begin to see consistency in products, we come to expect certain things from certain brands. Having that sense of security makes us feel a little better, doesn't it? That's the point– we learn to trust our favorite brands. We feel personally abused if our brand "lets us down".

So what's in a good brand? Brand identity: they have values, a purpose, and a design language. They have consistency as their products or services are part of the same "family". They are recognizable.

I found this blog post on brand familiarity– the brand names have been replaced in the logos. Some of the replaced names are pretty funny! (HP especially made me smile)

http://www.design-logix.co.uk/blog/blog-entry/can_you_recognise_these_familiar_brands

thinking about where I am

School's back in session! I spent this summer at Hasbro games. I haven't ever been sure of where I want to specifically take my career, but lately I've had some better ideas of what I'd like to do. My only design-related work experiences have been at Fisher-Price and Hasbro Games, which I have enjoyed. Aside from having a fun working environment, I've discovered the joy in designing things that will be fun for others. However, I'm also interested in working at less "playful" places. I feel that I'd enjoy designing anything that will help others or make a positive impact. This is broad, but so true for me. I could elaborate on this further, but as the title of this blog states: these are the sprinkles, it ain't the whole cupcake! And I'm sure I'll have a better idea once I can get out and have more experience.

the vision

After a little more thinking, I've come up with my next list of desired product requirements. These "requirements" are a little more loose, because they are dependent on what I'm capable of accomplishing in five weeks.
-The bowling pins will be shaped like actual bowling pins, rather than taking on shaping cues of a Coca-Cola bottle. Although it may be fun to bowl a bunch of bottles, I would rather come up with a useable product that could, in theory, be used in any bowling alley.
-The pins should be within the weight requirements of a typical bowling pin.
-They will be sturdy enough that they could be used in a real bowling alley. This is not necessarily the case for my own model, just the design itself.
-They would have a transparent shell so that the lights inside can be easily seen from the end of the bowling alley.


I'm thinking that the lights in these Coca-Cola bowling pins will be activated by a button at the base. When the pin is in an upright position, the button is pressed and the lights are on. After a pin has been knocked over, the button will release and the light will go off. It would be really cool if I could get the lights to flash for a few seconds, and THEN go off. Gotta figure out this electrical stuff somehow. I'll use multiple LEDs inside each bowling pin because they'd be able to take a beating from bowling balls!

Here's some of the sketches that I did prior to making this requirement list.

Project Direction Thought Process

My Coca-Cola task light requirements:
must promote socialization, or to be used in a setting with friends.
not flashy or over the top.
looks fun/trendy.
simple shape/design.
for ANY age!

This has been a complicated set of requirements. I can't exactly do a flashlight, booklight, or night light... none of these could promote socialization in the way that Coca-Cola does. Although it sounded fun to do something like a lava lamp or glow sticks, I was concerned that my final concept would look like a little girl's third grade science project or something. Not to mention, there's a lot of stereotypes that go along with lava lamps and glow sticks that don't align well with the Coca-Cola brand. Club lighting seemed like fun, but it's exclusive to the younger crowd. In addition, it didn't go along with one of my core words, "refreshing". Normally, the club scene isn't considered a relaxing time with friends! Relaxing social activities seem to be constrained to hanging out at home or at casual restaurants. Man. I could research technologies and invent something new. Something small, like a keychain, that glows brighter when it's in close proximity to another one of these keychains? That would promote socialization. But what would it BE? I can't do it!! It feels too forced!!

It seemed that the only option was to do some mood lighting– an overhead lamp that would provide a soft glow in a restaurant setting or a game room at home. It would include Coca-Cola aesthetics, and I could have several different versions and styles. You could even build your own!

But still... Coca-Cola is way cooler than that. So, during a late-night-homework-party with my roomie, I started thinking about it differently. Why not use a social activity that already uses light? That way, the aspect of "togetherness" would be a natural piece of the product. Laser Tag!! Sounds like fun. But this has the same problems as club lighting– it's exclusive to younger crowds, and it isn't refreshing.

I love how I came to my brilliant idea. I stated it out loud, sarcastically: "glow bowling....." and had my 'aHA' moment and my eyes nearly popped out of my head: "YES!!!" It's one of those social activities that isn't too tiresome or draining. It's classic. Youngsters and old timers both appreciate it. And of course, it's a good time with friends!

In conclusion, my task is glow bowling, and my task lights are the bowling pins themselves. But rather than have white pins that glow in the blacklights, the pins can actually have lightbulbs inside a transparent exterior shell. Seems like an innovative, Coca-Cola thing to do, right?

So there's my thought process in a nutshell. I'll be honest– I didn't come up with each idea in this exact order, it just made the most sense to present it this way. And it's way more exciting to hear the best idea last!

What about Coca-Cola?

I made some Coca-Cola findings which will help me to determine the fundamentals of the brand. For my class presentation, I showed a few examples of the advertising history, the company's general history, the competitive products, and a "mind map" of all the words that I associate with Coca-Cola. I catagorized the words into 4 groups: classic, cool, refreshing, and togetherness. I'll use these four words to guide my design for the task light.
p.s. I hope everyone can appreciate how sad the competitive products are. I mean come on, Pepsi copies Coke in every way that they can afford to get away with. Except for their website, which is way too flashy for my taste. And I thought it was funny that the first google image search hit for "new pepsi logo" was the icon for the Obama campaign logo. Does anyone else feel that Pepsi needs to learn how to be effectively original? Ok, enough of that tangent, I'm sure no one cares.
So here's the presentation that I made:

Coca-Cola: the brand

View more presentations from beckysteggs.

Coca-Cola product finds

My project for this quarter is to pick any existing brand, narrow down the fundamental beliefs/aspects of the brand, and design a light based on the core elements of the brand.  It should look like it could have been designed by that company.  

I decided to use Coca-Cola because it has become an American icon and it has such an interesting history behind it.  I love that it's 'the original'.  Classic.  Yep, over the past few years I've grown to determine that when given the choice between Coca-Cola or Pepsi, I WILL choose the original, not the copycat!  Besides, who's got the better design logo?  No comparison.  The more I work on this project, the more biased I'm becoming... haha.  

First I looked around and found some Coca-Cola-themed products to use as references.  It seems that everything follows a basic pattern:  It's primarily red and white, and it has  the Coca-Cola logo on it.  Awesome.  Well, I'll have to do more than that for this design project if I don't want to be a total cop out.