Roach Bridge Brief

We were asked to design some tissue paper by Roach Bridge for a live brief. The target market are small retailers who only want small quantities of paper. We were asked to design something that is on trend using water based colours. The material it will be printed on is a 25gms paper roll - approx 60 cm wide. The design will be put on a plate rather than a lasered roller. We were told to use a simple repeat pattern like wallpaper. Whoever designs the best tissue paper for the company will be rewarded will £300!

I researched some wallpaper designs;

http://www.johnlewis.com/Home+and+Garden/Home

+Decorating/Wallpapers/SubCategory.aspx

I used Illustrator to design my tissue paper and have a selection of red, purple, green and yellow.

I enjoyed doing this brief and I am happy with my designs.

Cereal Packaging Designs

A TASTE SENSATION

Our group kind of drifted away from each other and we hadn't seen each other for a while so I designed this packaging for the cereal bars. The colours are fresh and vibrant, which I think will attract our target market - young people. Our unique selling proposition is - 'A Taste Sensation'.

We decided to price the cereal at £2 for 5 bars as we originally said we think it's good value for money.

A SWOT analysis;

Strengths: This new product will encourage teenagers to eat a healthy breakfast on the go.

Weaknesses: It has a lot of competitors.

Opportunities: Could develop into a range of cereal, healthy snacks etc and could branch abroad.

Threats: Someone could come up with a similar idea, which would put our product at risk.

We would sell our product in shops surrounding schools, colleges and universities, in order to attract our target market. We would also sell them on the high street to reign in more people into buying the product.

We would ask for the product to be positioned at eye level on the right hand isle because it is proven to be the best place to sell products.

Again, because I lost touch with my group members, I designed the poster in order to advertise the product, which will be displayed on billboards, in bus shelters, in display cabinets etc.

To promote the product we have put a 25p voucher on the packaging enabling you to get money off your next box of cereal bars.

I personally would buy these cereal bars because I don't eat breakfast in the morning so if I had some of these I could just put one in my bag and eat it on my way to Uni or where ever I was going. The fact that they're whole grain would tempt me even more into buy them because I always check the nutritional content.

I think if we had to do this brief again, I'd make sure each group member knew what was going on so that we could of done the designs together as a group. Also, it would be good to do more designs for the other flavours so we would do that too.

I think our survey on Survey Monkey was a very good idea because it was simple and clearly laid out and we got the results back fast where as if we had handed them out it would have taken much longer.

Carrying out this brief has introduced me to marketing and how to successfully get a product on the market knowing that people will like it and therefore make a profit.

Project 2 - Design a new breakfast cereal

We were given a brief asking to design and promote a new healthy range of breakfast cereal. Me, Aaysha and Madiha decided to work together as a group. The new cereal had to be kept within the recommended daily allowance for our target group. The idea behind the cereal range was to encourage people to eat a healthy breakfast every morning. We were able to choose which group we wanted to target.

We made a plan to market the new cereal to ensure it makes a profit and takes market share away from the other main competitors.

We came up with the name 'Snax' for a breakfast cereal bar, which we aim to sell to students/teenagers between the ages of 16-22. The cereal bar will come in a few varieties such as honey coated, strawberry, yoghurt coated and banana & chocolate. We think our cereal bar will be different from anything else because it has a catchy name, which will appeal to our target market and the packaging design will look fresh and eye catching. The combination of flavours is also quite different to what is already on the shelves. We will charge £2 for 5 bars, which is similar to other competitors and good value for money. It will have discount tokens attached to the packaging encouraging people to keep buying the product. We would sell the cereal bar in shops surrounding schools and universities and also on the high street. We will advertise and promote the cereal by using posters, Facebook and by word of mouth.

After making our business plan, we had to gather some Market Research - Secondary.

We found out existing cereal brands such as Alpen, Quaker, Ready Brek, Cadbury, Lyme Regis, Kellogg's, Nestle, Weetabix and Go Ahead. The types of cereal already out there are plain/sugar coated, flavoured - chocolate, strawberry, raisons, cinnamon etc, whole grain. We found out that the prices of cereals already on the market range from £1 to £4. The special offers on the market are free gifts in packets of cereal, 2 for £2 and buy one get one free. Whole grain cereals seem to be most popular because they are healthier.

Once we had gathered our secondary research we went on to finding some primary research in order to find out what cereal people buy on a regular basis and why. We made the survey using Survey Monkey and asked people on Facebook to fill it in.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRJSSKP

We found out that most people eat cereal in the morning, however for the people who said they

don't eat breakfast, they said they would be more likely to buy a cereal bar so they could eat it on

the go. It states that people are attracted to buy cereal that has good packaging and good

nutritional content. The majority of the people say they aren't bothered about the sugar content of

the cereal however it shows that the majority of people who took the questionnaire purchased

whole grain cereal. Most people prefer cereal to cereal bars however with the packaging and

new flavours we are going to produce I'm positive figures will change. Most people don't look at

the nutritional information on the box.

We researched some existing cereal packaging in order to get an idea for our designs.

Christmas Fayre

We decided on selling the boxes for £1 because the boxes themselves cost 50p each, so a £1 each was enough money to cover the cost of the boxes and the fillings leaving us with some profit.

Me and Rachel met the other teams early on the morning of the Christmas Fayre to set up our stall. The disadvantage of our stall was that it was upstairs in the Atrium and facing away from the SU therefore there wasn't much custom. The stall was open from 10 a.m til 3:30 p.m. It was based on campus therefore hardly any students were up and out in the morning meaning we didn't sell that many. However, in the afternoon, after I had finished the morning shift, another group member walked around campus selling them to students, which proved to be more successful.

We sold over half our boxes from selling them to students around campus rather than just displaying them on the stall. In order for the sale of our product to be more successful, I think we would have benefitted from better advertising and a better position for our stall (downstairs in the SU). Also, have a stall of our own because we had to share with other teams, which restricted us to how we could display our boxes.

Overall, I think we had a good product that sold reasonably well and we were successful in the planning, marketing and production of our product.

Production

After finding out what the target audience would like to see in our product, we decided what type of designs to put on the boxes and what fillings we were going to use.

Between six group members we allocated ourselves to create different designs to attract a variety of different people. For example, I designed decorative Christmas slips, which would appeal to most people, Madiha designed some floral designs in order to attract the female audience and Robbie designed some graffiti slips to attract teenagers.

Chocolates and sweets proved to be the most popular filling for the boxes so we discussed what would be best to buy around the festive season and decided to purchase some Ferraro Rochers and Terry's Chocolate Orange segments. Whilst we were busy designing the slips for the boxes, another team member went to the market and managed to pick up 26 Ferraro Rochers and a box of Terry's Chocolate Orange for just £8!! We also got some more chocolates from the market, a box of Quality Street, chocolate coins, pear drops and Dairy Milk pieces.

I told my group that we should separate the boxes with chocolates containing nuts in from the boxes with just chocolate in because of people with nut allergies. To save confusion we put the design slips around the boxes containing just chocolate and put ribbon around the boxes containing nuts.

Our boxes during the filling process.

Our boxes and some of the fillings..an idea of how it will look.

We used a variety of popular sweets bought from Poundland to fill some boxes. The sweets we used were dolly mixture, fizzy sweets, cherry sweets, millions etc.

If we had to redo this project again, I think we would reconsider using sweets containing gelatine because they are not suitable for some vegetarians and people who can't eat it.

We managed to fill all the boxes and decorate them with design slips and ribbon ready to be sold at the Christmas Fayre.

Market Research

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LSB22TM

In order to collect our market research we used Survey Monkey because it saved time handing questionnaires out to people around campus and waiting for them to fill them in.

Our target audience are students so we sent the survey to numerous people on Facebook because a vast amount of students have an account and access it regularly.

The questionnaire was short and was simply laid out therefore it attracted more people to complete it.

By using Survey Monkey it allowed us to collect our research and analyse it much more easily than if we had used another method. We used the results to decide how to create the treat boxes.

The market research was worth while as it gave us a knowledge as to what would be most successful and what wouldn't.

Snowflakes

In my Exploring Creative Business Elective, we have to create, produce, market and sell an item. Our group have decided to create little favours for Christmas; a small box containing sweets/mints/chocolates etc depending on what would be most popular after we carry out our market research.

We have bought the boxes off ebay and we are all designing the design slips to accompany the boxes. All proceedings will go to a charity of our choice at the end of the task.

Our group are currently asking people to complete a short survey in order for us to produce and market our product effectively in order for it to be successful.

This is currently what our boxes look like, we need to add our designs and small favours inside once our research is carried out;