Design Practice: Communication Is A Virus

Me and my chosen creative partner Pav, began brainstorming possible routes to take by coming up with as many different starting points as we could, before deciding upon the the quote 'Get people to try something new'. We recreated our own brief to...

Brief Title:

Communication Is A Virus - How does it spread?

The Brief:

Get people to try something new. Unusual foods and cuisines to be precise. Persuade people to be more adventurous with what they are eating. Inform them of the delights unusual food can offer. Bangers & Mash is a no go. Perhaps look to combine this with making people engage in different cultures. Or even as an interesting healthy alternative to the standard fruit and vegetables on offer.

Considerations:

Consider then context and environment in which this will be appropriate. A unique way of message distribution needs to be identified. A method that is relevant to the idea of food and eating.

Target Audience:

Anyone who is interested in trying new food and being adventurous. Culinary enthusiasts. Possibly even chefs who are looking to experiment more. Could even look to change people who are very set in their ways with food.

Tone Of Voice:

Informal. Unusual foods need to come across as exciting and appealing. Also needs to be informative so people learn about these fascinating foods.

Background:

Two colours plus stock in the design(s). Not too much detail in terms of information perhaps so the design(s) entice people to go out and buy/try what they have discovered. Type and image will be needed to convey the appropriate information. Should encourage people to act and try new food.

We sent out a questionnaire to get some ideas on what different food people liked. We asked them:

What is the strangest food combination they have had

The strangest vegetable they have had

The strangest fruit they have had

And their top three favourtie cuisines and dishes

From this we got a large range of interesting results. We were specifically drawn to the strange fruit and veg results as some were food we had never heard of. We then thought that maybe other people havn't heard of them and possibly would like to?

We thougth that the unusual fruit would be more interestign than the veg and we did some research into ones that peopel had suggested and others that we could find. We came up with a list of 41 and researched half each to find out the tast, origin, nutritional benefits, and recipe's for each fruit. Which we coudl then narrow down. The nutritional benefits were rather interesting as they were different in each fruit.

Here are our first boards to clarify the brief:

We narrowed are fruit down to 10; Rambutan, Feijoa, Horned Melon, Pitaya (Dragon), Sugar/Custard Apple, Buddha's Hand, Starfruit, Tamarillo, Mangosteen, Durian. I drew out some visuals for each of the fruit:

Here are a few mail shot ideas that I came up with:

We decided on this one as it has an unusual opening inside, which worked well with the 'unusual' fruit:

With having to create10 recipe cards we chose to narrow the fruit further down to 6, as to not make the consetina too thick and also to make printing easier. We cut the fruits down to the most interesting to; Feijoa, Horned Melon, Buddha's Hand, Durian, Pitaya (Dragon) and Custard/Sugar Apple.