Quick update on the project. Here are some elevations for the cafe proposal.
For this Haiku I mimicked the logo style, creating a new font based on circles and lines. Each of the vertical lines are on the window and each of the horizontal lines the wall. When viewed at the right angle, the haiku is visible.
Before I start please note: This is an imaginary brief for a university project, no such thing has been commissioned, this is just for context of the project. I’ve been meaning to write this up as I’ve been going but the concepts have been evolving pretty quickly. I have done a few ideas and wish to share them on my blog.
Project Haiku
Commissioned by London City Council and The Poetry Society it is your job to bring poetry to the citizens and visitors of London using design.
Proposed Brief 1:
Poetry is a form of communication. It paints images and invokes feelings. Communication today is short. We chat in 140 characters. We make one sentence status’. It’s visual: a snapchat here, an instagram there. Life is hashtags, tweets and vines. Short poems are known as sonnets, even shorter poems are known as a Haiku.
The project will take a number of Haiku, that paint images and invoke feelings and place them at key locations around London. Like modern communication, their lives shall be short, fleeting, temporary.
Proposed Brief 2:
This project is to persuade and inform people of the fun that poetry can bring to the mundane. Out buying a bottle of wine for dinner, here have a poem. Drinking in the bar, have something to read once you have finished your beer. Not into alcohol, no worries we have hidden haiku on your coffee. We’re not satisfied with sneaking these little critters into adults lives, they have infiltrated our schools too. Haiku will be added to pencils and stationery that can be given to schools and children free of charge.
Proposed Brief 3:
A pop up cafe using the language of hidden haiku from PB2.
More Images
I’ve been working on the ‘tea sample’ preliminary letter, that will be sent to prospective work experience companies. It will include a QR code to a special place on the blog where they can then leave a message or navigate elsewhere. This will be sent 4 weeks prior to the tea kit.
After some research, colours have been changed to green.
Blue was also tried.
Green translates the tea better, due to tea leaves being green etc. The tea supplied will be a simple English Breakfast blend, to try to appeal to all tastes of tea lovers.
The last few days have been one of experimentation. Working on box designs, paper engineering and what exactly I want to say with my tea-kit. I found a lovely paper to work with (Cream Laid Paper) which has a heavenly texture. This will be my business card/tea bag packaging.
Phone number is blacked out
I have styled the business card side of the design on a real tea bag packaging, using key words such as organically grown. I have played on the ingredients list and included links to my website (tiny url because the full website was long and cumbersome) as well as cute phrases.
There will be a series of three images and three phrases depending on where the package is going. “Check Meow-t”, “Purr-fect” and “It’s dangerous to go alone… take this!” (to fit with sending the package to game companies). Each image has a different style of cat.
A design change has been added to the original idea, that instead of cubed sugar, sugar packets will be used as they are more hygienic.
-Kit
After discussion about what it is like to be a design studio manager, and have a thousand and one CV’s and portfolios pass by your desk I decided to work on a care package of sorts, which will house my CV’s details, business card and cover letter. It will be in the style of packaging, to showcase my ability in that.
I have settled on a tea-kit (for a kit-tea, /kitty/, see what I did there?) which will house a tea bag, sugar and milk.
First is working on the tea-bag and business card design using the logo. I thought about making the card be part of the teabag, but it looked unprofessional and messy.
Back to the drawing board.
-Kit
Making logos or identities for other people is nothing new to me. I’ve made profiles and things, for various online identities regularly for years. Yet coming at this with fresh ‘designer’ eyes had me stumped. Do I show my unique personality, or will that scare away prospective employers. The whole work experience thing (at my age) is new. What if they don’t like what they see/hear/feel?
I quickly threw that negativity to one side. This was a new leaf, a new chapter, a new battle.
I spent a day working on identities that embodied my hobbies, likes, and personality before settling on the logo that I did.
Ideas ranging from cosplay, paw prints and cute faces hiding in words until I finally settled upon the clean-looking K with a kitty/cat.
To me the design is simple, clean and works well with the ideas I have in mind for attracting attention to my work.
-Kit
KitKei Design 