Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Ikea Packaging



I was in Ikea at the weekend and I couldn’t help but buy loads of stuff I didn’t need from the food shop because the packaging was so good. This styling has been around for a while but great design is timeless. I've seen examples of it before in design press, but when you actually see it you really want to get a hold of it.



When you can reduce something down to it’s most simple form and still communicate it’s core values you have created something special. It’s simplicity is so refreshing. It is so honest, and honesty is really appetising in food retail.



I didn’t look at the price because I trusted it. I don’t know if I’ll like any of it, but who cares! It looks great sitting on my shelves and in my fridge. It stands out against everything.

It even has a sense of humour. Check out the ring pull on the Sardines…

www.stockholmdesignlab.se/ikea/food-packaging/

While you’re on these guys site check out their Ohmine Sake packaging. Lovely stuff!

Steve Oakey

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

Consistency is everything…

The BBC is having a tough time of it at the moment, which is rather unfortunate as it try’s hard to raise another record breaking sum for Children in Need and also celebrate 90 years of Radio Broadcasting.

Recently we were lucky enough to work at New Broadcasting House, the new home to all things BBC Radio in London, we developed a branded package for their new restaurant and café, which gave us an interesting insight to the BBC and it’s inner workings.

This lead me to reflect on the BBC National Radio Station identities. I’ve always admired a lot of BBC’s design output including the now iconic circle themed display idents:

BBC ONE circle idents.
 
Looking at the old identities as a group, they really were a confusion of designs being created at different times by different teams with different agendas. There wasn’t a common voice at all.


The new designs have far more structure.


The BBC Radio mark is now placed firmly on the top left in a consistent position. The station’s individual idents are all in circles, providing consistency with the TV idents mentioned above.

The individuality of each station however comes with the treatment of the numeric, casting an aspect of its personality or purpose. Some are clever, some subtle and others are just pleasing to the eye 3, 4 and 7 being my personal favorite’s with the clef, speech mark and smile on each summing up the stations primary objective.

These identities, old and new serve to demonstrate how important design, branding and consistency is across a manufacturers’ or service providers’ range of products, be it food packaging or portfolio of investment products online literature. A fact we are very aware of and consider everyday in our work here at Eat with Your Eyes.

If you need help in any of these areas, you know where we are!

Jason Beeby

Tuesday, 13 November 2012

Edible Art

Combining some of my favourite things, creativity, quirkiness, fun and FOOD! Who wouldn’t love to eat Luke Skywalker made out of icing?!



Now, playing with your food is nothing new but creating real masterpieces out of food is becoming more and more socially acceptable (sorry starving kids in Africa, it's not wastage – it's art!)
Whether it be a vegetable landscape, sushi Mona Lisa or beef burger trainers, edible art has moved on from the macaroni necklace I made my Mum as a child.



Edible art comes in many forms, take self proclaimed artistic chef Heston Blumenthal, he creates dishes he would describe as pieces of art. Edible alcoholic snow, parsnip cereal and snail porridge, but is it really 'art'? I like to see people who really think outside the box and take the idea of food as an art-form to a whole new level (and make it a lot more fun!). Take Bournemouth University, who ran TOAST earlier this year, the edible art exhibition inspired by the London 2012 games. Flaming Grill Pub Co restaurants also got involved, branding their steaks with the faces of Team GB - anyone hungry for a Bradley Grillins or Sir (loin) Chris Hoy?



Anyone can have a go at making their own masterpiece from Morrison's, literally anything is possible (if you have the talent, and the patience), as a modest master cake maker myself I got overexcited at the introduction of the airbrushing kit for cakes, enabling Cake-iteers to literally create works of real art using the icing as a canvas, with endless possibilities – see the Millennium Falcon cake below, amazing. My favourite edible art has to be food masquerading as other food - check out the steak cake!




Hungry for more? For more mouthwateringly good edible art check out http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/article/28-fascinating-food-art-photos.html

Helene Turner

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

11.06.12 – Election Day.



Today, Americans go to the polls to vote for their new President and in some people’s eyes, ours too. The Obama machine is well known for its PR campaigns and excellent marketing strategies (remember the Hope poster of 2008). So what better time to give the latest round of brands my eagle-eye critique;


Barack Obama Created by Sol Sender for the 2008 campaign, the Obama ‘O’ was a focal point of the Obama brand and has been retained again for the 2012 edition.


The latest ‘2012’ creation is bolder, featuring a blue background to the previous white. The Gotham font has also been retained, with aded serifs? Can we add serifs to Gotham – for the President of the United States, yes we can!


I like the rural connotations of the logo, it conveys a homely and very American feel – the red and white stripes instantly say to me ‘the land of the free’. One which Siegel and Gale’s New York based President Howard Belk believes too, “There’s a very strong simplicity to it. Visually it suggests a land of opportunity, the wide open country, and an inclusive circle, inviting people to step in”. Though some corners of the design world have criticised it for lacking emotion.


The ‘Forward’ strapline to Obama’s campaign is given its own ‘Google doodle’ in the header of the Obama website - http://www.barackobama.com/; really shows the attention to detail his party is giving it’s every message.


Mitt Romney Romney’s in comparison is quite poor. It’s a very ‘American’ design using a classical font and styling - basic requirement for any presidential candidate. The R’s icon illustrates quite crudely the president and vice-president elect Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, did anyone guess that!? The icon itself is quite crudely drawn, though you feel it could have been refined given a little more time.




Belk says, “It was originally a double R and now it’s a triple R but either way as a pure piece of graphic design it’s extraordinarily amateurish. The typography is unclear and squishy and there’s no clarity or crispness”, he adds. “The kerning is atrocious, and the letter spacing on the ‘ey’ is so weak,” he adds. Not one to sit on the fence!


It’s believed from various design sources that the Obama 2012 identity is the stronger of the two and some believing the Romney R’s were hastily designed in-house as opposed to Obama’s professionally designed brand. Just goes to show what you can achieve with an agency helping you. And to conclude, lets end with the latest TV ad by the Obama machine – Go Obama! Obama for America, Big Bird TV Advert
 
Or for more videos you can check out Obama’s YouTube page.

 Paolo Ventrone