Website Development

Took away the yellow pattern from the background to simplify the overall design and to keep it more controlled and restricted. However i feel that there still needs to be something such as a illustration or pop of more colour to give it a boost.

Have changed the background colour of the container to white from black and have also edited the photos to strong black and white images to look cohesive with the other touch points and to keep the colour palette restricted.

Rearranged the layout of the type to make it more legible- achieved this by adding colomns in the HTML document.

Further Website Development

Have now added a pattern to the background of the websites home page as well as making the menu bar buttons turn yellow and the font black once you hover over them. Have also added a resource page which allows you to download the poster, flyer and coffee slip. This page also has a link to bring you back to the home page. The basic coding is now done, however there is a lot more to consider and to develop to improve the legibility of the overall website.

 

Home Page

 

Colour of selection bar changes once you hover over the buttons

 

Resource Page

Website Development

Originally we chose template 2 as the basis of our design

 

We got rid of the left and right column as they were unnecessary for our website as we do not have as much information to display and we want to keep our website fairly minimal so that it is easy to use and easy to locate the info you want.  

Website Visuals

These are the original ideas to use as the imagery for our website. The colours and style have remained the same to keep the different touch points consistent throughout. 

 

Home Page Banner

  

Resource Page Imagery

Coffee Slip Development

Below is our refined coffee slip design - once again we have used imagery that communicates the theme of liberation as well as using cultural patterns that are influenced by the countries that produce the FairTrade coffee. The colours yellow and black along with the illustration style have been used again to keep all touch points cohesive.  

 

Template to fit the slip design into in order for it to sit properly on the takeaway cup. 

After redesigning the slip to fit the template properly and printing out some mock-ups, i found that the text needs to be adjusted so that it is read as a straight line once around the takeaway cup. 

Coffee Slip 'Fit' Research

Looking at the StarBucks coffee slip as research and to get a better understanding of how the slip fits the coffee cup/ what kind of shape it needs to be.

Flyer development

Here are a few development compositions for the front of the flyer. The most difficult thing with the flyer is making the aesthetic consistent with the trans-media elements while not arming the it with too many image since it is only A5 size, it could easily become too busy.

   

Playing with illustration and pattern

Adding colour and photographic montage

Adding a child, making it more consistent with poster design

Cut out of the pattern underneath image

Adding sacking texture an illustration

Adding colour to the plants, making image more cohesive

Creating circular shape our of sacking

Adding the fair-trade logo and an illustration of south america, where fair-trade coffee is grown

poster development

Here is the first version of the refined poster:

The feedback we got from this poster was that the colours were not cohesive enough, the text was not prominent in terms of the image and the eyes with the cut outs were giving s confusing meaning.

After this feedback we have remade the poster in a duo tone colour.

This is the redone poster, focusing on the yellow on black and white. Although the colours in this one are more cohesive, I feel that the cut out eyes with coffee plants growing from them are more effective in grabbing attention, despite the feedback we received.

Rules to help with constructing website

• ·      Usability.  Providing information is the key reason for a website. This is the most curtail thing about the website.
• ·      Logo is usually in the top left corner. Follow the general rules that everyone is used to when using a website.
• ·      Body copy size in web design is 12pt-16pt different typefaces will be different sizes. Making type a bit bigger is better than too small.
• ·      Images. RGB, JPG, 72 dpi. PNG- transparent layers are possible. Photoshop has save for web option.

typography rules revised in class

Type rules:

• ·      Use a grid format. This ensures everything is inline, gives constancy, alignment and control.
• ·      Hierarchy is important. Draws attention to the most important things, bigger and bolder, easier to read certain things. Categorises information and gives everything a functional order which gives a quick over view of the meaning of the contents
• ·      Limit the number and size of your typefaces. This will give consistency, have a differentiation between the two typefaces that you choose on the same piece of work (make sure they are complementary).
• ·      Legibility: 

o   The ideal line length is 7 words. This is the easiest line length for the human eye to read.

o   Spelling and grammar is correct. You could have the computer read it to you

o   9 or 10 pt body copy.  Be aware of the different sizes for different type. Too big type can be clumsy, too small can be hard to read

o   hyphenation, turn this off.

o   Be aware of widows and orphans

o   Kerning, you don’t want to make it more than 20% stretched or squashed

o   Ledding the space between each line

o   Ragged edges, left align for body copy and keep the edge as tidy as possible. Keep to edge consistency ragged

o   Rivers. These are big gaps between the text in body copy, this can be caused by justifying the text.

Coffee Slip

For our Open Format touch point we have chosen to design a coffee slip, as it obviously fits in with our topic well and is a great, simple way to raise awareness of FairTrade to coffee buyers. 

      

                                         

Type Exploration

Experimenting with different type faces to see what best conveys the message and tone we want to portray. The images below show some of the different options we were looking at, however we decided that a handwritten font would work best with our natural montage style, as it goes well with the drawings used and is not as serious as other fonts tried. 

In the above poster heirachy has been considered, and the word 'change' is most dominant to engage the viewers and to get them wondering what kind of change this poster is about. The topic and date is also very important hence is also stand out on the page. The imagery could be larger as a whole to grab the viewers attention from a distance and to make it stand out a lot more.  

Standouts well however looks to boring and formal for the kind of style

To bold/over powering compared to the line thickness of the drawings?

Hand-drawn type font works well with overall style and line drawings

type exploration

after trying some different types of typography with one possible poster a handwritten type seems to best suit the aesthetic and reflect the natural and eclectic feel that we want our work to display.

helvetica cy hand drawn

helvetica cy hand drawn and stretched

 completely hand drawn

behas hand drawn (just outline)

behas hand drawn

Concept Explorations

Here are some concepts that communicate a liberation theme of the coffee workers using a combination of imagery, hand drawn patterns and other sketches. From the feedback given, they need more texture and more treatment to the images, which may just be a matter of playing around with the colouring or cropping it in a different way.

Imagery Development - Patterns

These are some of the patterns that i first drew in my workbook, then scanned into illustrator and live traced them, also touched them up on photoshop. I was inspired by Ethiopian, and South American patterns and markings as these are the places that are the main source of coffee. The choice of colour could also further represent this in the patterns.  

Fair trade research

Fairtrade research to go towards the body copy.

Coffee is big business and remains one of the most valuable primary products in world trade. However, for many of the world’s 25 million coffee farmers, coffee is a labour intensive crop that frequently yields very little financial return.

Coffee is also enormously valuable to the economies of many developing countries.  For some of the world’s Least Developed Countries, such as Burundi, the cultivation of coffee accounts for the majority of foreign exchange earnings, up to 80%.  Most of the coffee-dependent workers worldwide are in developing countries, especially Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Mexico, the largest exporters of coffee.

The history of coffee on the world market has always been characterized by its high price volatility.  This volatility prompted international governments to negotiate the first International Coffee Agreement to stabilize the coffee market in 1962.  Quotas were introduced so that excessive coffee supplies were withheld from the market and coffee consumption was promoted.

Fairtrade Standards for coffee act as a safety net against the unpredictable market. They provide security to coffee producers so that they will get a price that covers their average costs of sustainable production.

Fairtrade coffee producers are small family farms organized in cooperatives or associations which the farmers own and govern democratically.

Fairtrade Impact: 

The Fairtrade Premium is the sum of money paid on top of the agreed price for investment in social, environmental or economic development projects that meet the needs of producer groups.

Neknasi achieved Fairtrade Certification in May of 2011, and in December 2011, they received AUD 8,000 in Fairtrade Premium. The Board members report that Neknasi is developing a plan to use its first Fairtrade Premium to expand and improve its current water supply system to include coffee gardens close to members’ villages. In the near future, the cooperative will increase production levels as a result of their recent vehicle purchase and improvements in sustainable farm management practices such as weeding and pruning. The Board also reports that Neknasi has plans to increase association membership.  

Currently, Neknasi’s only export crop is coffee, however it is developing its vanilla production and hopes to export vanilla under Fairtrade Certification in the future.

In the future Neknasi plan to use the Premium to invest in the following problem areas::

•   High levels of illiteracy among farmers due to expensive school fees and the remote location of primary and secondary schools.

•   Endemic health issues such as malaria and complications during childbirth, and the corresponding  lack of sufficient medical supplies and convenient health centres.

•   Remote mountainous locations, which translate into high transport costs, lower prices to producers, and difficulties in achieving access to markets.