Spilt Milk Photography

Spilt Milk.
Photography.
For the photography, Mel and I decided that we would do it together, this means that we would be able to get it done more efficiently and better. Having two people laying out the branding for the photography helps so much, as two sets of eyes are better than one. We have chosen to use a light grey in the background for this brief. I think that this will compliment the colours in our brand more, and allow them to stand out on the background, without using white and looking too tacky. As this is a collaborative brief it is important that we photograph everything together for our design boards, but also have a lot of the separate things that we contributed to the brief on our own and together, so that we can explain what we did for the brief and show it at the same time.

The photography for this brief went really well. I think having more than one person photographing makes it a lot easier to do. Also Mel and I work really well together, we work in a similar way, therefore we both agreed with what we had to do. This is a brief that I am really proud of and I think that it has gone really well. Mel is someone that I would always work with as she is really efficient in the way that she works, and brought lots of different skills to this brief.

Putting Spilt Milk Together

Making the Spilt Milk Ephemera.
Mel and I decided to take a day aside and get everything printed and made together so that we could help each other do it, as it would definitely take more than one person to do all of the making of the ephemera for the branding. We both cut our all of the things that we did and made them, then we both went through the other parts like the pattern on the jars and the labels for them as it was quite fiddly.

Having both of us doing the printing and making made the task a lot easier and quicker. Mel and I have worked really well together through this brief so far, we work at the same pace and have equal skills in different areas which is great for this branding brief as there are many different parts to it that needed doing. We have a photography slot in a few days to picture it all. Therefore all we have to do between now and then is to bind the brand guidelines which Mel is doing, and sort out the props to go in the jars, and the cookie packaging, which I am sorting out.

Spilt Milk Development

Development.
For this brief both Mel and I distributed the jobs evenly, this is so that we can get the most amount out work done and use our time efficiently. Some of my jobs were to produce the coasters for the milkshakes, so that if people wanted to eat/drink in, they can sit at a table and their milkshakes would go on the coasters. Also another job of mine is to produce the loyalty cards for Spilt Milk.

Coasters.
For the coasters I am wanting them to follow the brand guidelines. I want them to reflect the actual brand rather than reflect the patterns used for the chocolates, sweets, fruit or cakes. The brand has a stripe pattern to it which is found on the back of a lot of the products and ephemera. This is something that I want to include in the coasters on either the front or the back. I want to coasters to be very lighthearted and consist of quotes and type only. The quote on them should be playful like the brand and share the brand colours and messages.

I have worked out that the stripey pattern doesn't work well on the front of the coasters, this is because if the type, and the fact that it doesn't read well with the stripes on the front. Therefore I think that keeping the stripey print to the background of the coasters, like it is on the menu and the takeout milkshake cups too.

I think keeping the coasters quite simple and referencing social network throughout is a good idea for the coasters. It will encourage people to use social networking, which will help the business become more established and get more people to know about Spilt Milk.

Loyalty Cards.
Loyalty cards are quite an important thing to have in a milkshake shop. It does encourage people to come back as well as having a really nice milkshake. I think that it is important to keep the design for the loyalty card, keep it within the same aesthetics of the brand itself, using the stripes as the back of the loyalty cards will do this.

I started by looking a different loyalty cards to see how many stamps you would need before getting a free item. I decided that instead of having blank circles I would do an illustration of a milkshake in the same style that I have done the other illustrations. I realised that it would be really hard to see how many stamps or signatures when it is full colour, therefore I think that making the milkshake glasses have a 30% opacity this would make the signature, sticker or stamp more clear.

The milkshakes make the loyalty cards what they are. Without them the loyalty card would look too bare. When the customers buy a milkshake there will be small rounded stickers that are clear and have the full colour of the milkshakes so that it is clear how many milkshakes have been bought on the loyalty card.

Spilt Milk Printed Patterns

Printed Patterns.
Both Mel and I decided that we wanted our logo to be quit plain, and stick to the colour plan. Whilst doing this we want to include patterns for each section of the menu. This is so that the milkshake flavours and jars will all have a printed pattern on the label. Therefore I decided that I would start to think about each of the flavours and which patterns I am going to make for each, whilst Mel is working on the wall and table menus. We decided that we want to pattern to be  mostly outlines and vector illustrations. Also the pattern is to be used as a background thing rather than the focus of anything in the milkshake bar.

Sweets Pattern.

The illustrations all need to follow the same or a similar aesthetic as each other. This is why I think it will take a lot longer to do the sweet pattern than the others as this will be the first one. The illustrative style that I think will be best for Spilt Milk is to have minimal detail in the illustration, but allowing the distinctive parts to stand out.

Whilst making the illustrations I played with the proportions this is so that I can make all of the aesthetics the same.

After creating four different sweets I thought that I would try using some of the other colours in our colour scheme. Although after doing this I have realised that this definitely doesn't work like this, and I don't think that these colours would print well on each other, although it could be a coloured stock.

Sticking with the cyan and white, I tried two prints when putting them together. One which is is more spread out, and the other which are closer together to get more of the print in. I sent both of these patterns to Mel to see which she preferred, as I don't really have a preference. The one Mel preferred was the more spaced out pattern. Also she said that she loved the pattern and the style of them, this means that I can now move forward with the rules that it is outlines and slight detail only, using cyan and white, spaced out a bit, and using five of each thing.

Fruit Pattern.

After doing the first pattern which was sweets, the rest of them came quite easily as I have now got something to work from. Using the same colours, style, spacing, and amount of things in the pattern, therefore it is just about keeping the same style as I have drawn the others in.

Cake Pattern.

I have decided to start putting all of the illustrations in separate files so that they don't get lost and there is always a back up. Trying out different layouts is important, so that I can have them all fitting together well.

All of the cakes and biscuits used in this pattern are on the menu. This is so that if people do see the pattern when coming into the milkshake bar they could see a bake well tart for example and think, yes that's definitely the milkshake that I would like. This adds to the effect of the patterns, making them have a subtle influence on the customers.

Chocolate Pattern.

Chocolate was definitely the hardest pattern to illustrate. This is becasue chocolate is very hard to illustrate as the chocolate that we have on the menus are distinguished by taste. Although we do have a few different chocolates that are different shapes, this really helps to distinguish each iconic piece of chocolate.
 
Overall I am really happy with the patterns, they work really well together, and I think that the labels will benefit from these a lot. I also think that having a subtly pattern in the background of things, or from the back/inside of things is very fitting with this brand. As Spilt Milks aim is to sell milkshake but also to bring people together socially. WE will do this using social networking, having games and competitions in store and getting people to drink/eat in, instead of most milkshake shops which try to sell a lot and don't really have a comfortable environment for people to sit in.