FINALLY! EVERYTHING IS OFF TO PRINT!

HALLELUJAH!

We haven't been posting on this blog for the last week or so and there were a few updates that we didn't post mainly because we were so busy actually doing our project and rushing for time that we didn't get a chance to. The last week was definitely a very stressful time for our group and we put in a lot of time on this project. We stayed back quite late on many days and came in on Saturdays just to catch up and make sure we meet our deadline for print which was Thursday afternoon.

Over the last week we refined all our designs and make our final choices and decisions. On Tuesday we finished designing most of our things and by the end of the day we made ourselves take charge and be decisive, rather than wasting time thinking and procrastinating and re-designing all these different things we chose what we want and the design we want to go with and just making refinements for those choices. We needed to do this on Tuesday to make sure we had enough time on Thursday to do other things.

Thursday came and we needed to make sure everything was set to go, first we colour matched everything so that all our yellows and dark greys were the say because throughout the process of designing our brand we realised that our yellows and dark greys were all different and they weren't consistent. After that we had to call the printers and find out everything that we needed for print such as the type of file and how they want us to send the designs to them for print.

Thursday was definitely the toughest and longest day, we were literally working really hard all day. There was definitely frustration evident from all of us today but we pulled through and made it out the other end.

We ended up making our deadline and sent everything to print on Thursday afternoon. After sending it we were so relieved and we can't express how happy we are even though the project isn't actually over and there are more things to do but overcoming this stage felt like a victory in itself because it was definitely a very tough road that we walked now that we look back and we are glad it's coming to an end and we don't have to keep designing anymore. Now we are just waiting for our the print material to come back and we can start making them and taking photos of them.

Back on track... for the billionth time

After a 2 week slump we finally got back on our feet and decided to do something about it. We didn't have the motivation or determination to continue anymore, but after thinking for a bit and procrastinating a lot we realised that we were at that stage that if we didn't start doing something we would actually not finish this project for the presentation at the end. We were in a bad place and we had to get out of it, none of us wanted to make a start or that that first step.

We started thinking positively and said to ourselves, it's a month left till our degree is over and everything will come to an end, so we should give it our all and everything that we have in the next 4 weeks. It's the home run and we should just do the best we can, after all it's our major work.

Once we made the first step, as you expected, we got on a roll and things all fell into place. Motivation and the hunger to continue and drive to want to work hard all came back. We started redesigning all the things that we needed to. We updated the wall that we recently made, which has helped us a lot.

Of all our deliverables, most of them we actually had to reconsider. Over the space of 2 days we started redesigning everything we had to. Here are the results! despite hating to redesigning all of these and dreading this project already, but redesigning everything and looking at it we knew that it was all worth it and all the stress would always lead to something better. When our lecturer said we should go away and rethink things we didn't want to but being where we are now, we knew it was always going to be good for us and it was always going to get better design out of us. Even though it was really draining and challenging but it definitely does look better and we are happy with how everything unfolded, the good and bad. 

We've been designing with what failed before in mind so we don't commit the same mistakes again. We started adding more images and patterns to our brand, making it look more complete. We started showing more love to our design and thinking about it before we commit to anything. We are happy with where we are at and the motivation is definitely there. 

We decided to make a business card set with four different patterns, here are the two sets we are thinking of, one with black as well which we are leaning towards.

It was suggested that we use imagery in our loyalty cards, especially something with human elements in it since being a restaurant it's all about serving food for people. So we tried some ideas with imagery and playing with the image as well.

The L&P game definitely looks a lot better now but there still needs to be some work on it, we aren't happy with it just yet.

This is our little Instagram game that will be on the back of the specials menu. It was suggested that we use imagery as well since it's something fun and something that should get people excited, it's different from our menus. Started playing around with the layout and changing it up. It's looking better but we aren't sold on the image.

The following is the main menu, we ditched the lemon pattern and we tried several different ideas such as imagery, patterns, flat colour and outer glows, even a mixture of imagery and patterns. It definitely looks a lot more fresh.

The drinks menu has also been changed, we tried images and patterns. We like the patterns but unsure whether that clashes with the main menu if we use images for that.

Right now, although the truth is we are rushing for time and deadlines are really tight, but we are in a positive mood and we believe we can get this done. 

Demotivated. Demoralised. Destroyed

Even though we have made some changes but we are just stuck in this bad dip. For all our previous projects we have bad weeks too, but it always lasts for about a week while for this project we have been having a few bad weeks in a row. We don't know how to bounce back and we don't have the motivation to. This is probably the most challenging project we've all been apart of.

This week we showed our lecturer what we came up with and the direction we have chosen to go to improve ourselves. It was okay and we were given more ideas to build on it.

The thing is now that we have so many things that we need to change, so many things that we need to try, so many decisions that we have to make. It's just all in our face and we don't know where to start. That's the thing at the moment, we have so much in front of us and we don't know where to start. To have something you've worked on for 5 months and having to rip it apart when it was 6 weeks till it was due dealt a huge blow to our morale. Right now we have no motivation whatsoever to start and we have been procrastinating. Team morale is at an all time low and no one seems to want to do work, at this current stage it's another month till all this is due and we are still very far from where we need to be.

We think the main thing is the fact there is so many things that can be either here or there which means we need to make decisions and we don't know what decision we make is right or wrong. Everything is just up in the air and it's all over the place that we don't know how to put it all together.

On top of this we have no idea how the website is going. Our group member Jeanel hasn't contacted us for over 3 weeks, there is no communication about the website and also no communication if she is coming to class or not and we also haven't seen her in about 2 weeks. Nothing from her side so we don't know what is going on there and if we need to think of another plan for the website.

With a month to go I don't know how we will bounce back from this, as it's been about three weeks have we've been in this bad run. We just hope somehow, something will happen that can put some drive back into ourselves.

New ideas. New beginning?

We went through and started thinking of how we could fix the problem that we are in now. We came up with a few different ideas and the main thing we kept in mind was the have more patterns and elements that we can have as part of our brand so everything didn't look the same and boring.

First thing we did was create a bunch of different patterns that could work. Then we went through what we already had and decided what we could keep that was good enough and what we had to change. In the end we needed to change quite a lot of things, our whole packaging, our menus, some of our stationery and also our advertising campaign. In doing so we also need to update and change the style guide as well, so we have a lot ahead of us. We are in a really bad place, so we need to park hard to get back on track

Where to now?

The first step we took was to print everything we have done so far out and put it all up on a wall. We needed everything right in front of us as a whole set and make all the amendments from there.

The main things we wanted to do was to create more patterns that were still part of our brand look and have more elements. From this we thought about ideas such as stripes, "&", crosses and dots as patterns, or having the "&" as an element on it's own like how we have the lemon.

We made some design decisions as well and changed a few things. We made sure we stuck to our core values of fresh, clean and happy and referred back to that for everything we have designed so far and for the ones that didn't work we made changes. Jaz and Delvin stayed back quite late to get all this done and as much as we could so that we could get back on top of things and have a direction of where to go from here.

Here is what we did,

Here are the list of things we need to do or change

Once the team gets together we will have a breakdown of everything and start again from there. There's lots of work to do but I think we can make it work and make this a better package as a whole. For the packaging specifically we will get help next week to make it as good as it can be.  

Now that we have found a better printer that can print faster we can have more time to get things done.