Exercise: Point of sale display

The Brief

• They want the display to be seen from the street through the shop window, attracting passing shoppers in order to boost their trade.
• The shop is in a small precinct, on the route to and from a well respected primary school. The Precinct also houses
  a baker,
  a newsagent,
  an independent shoe shop

   

Design

• The final reproduction size will be 2 x A1 landscape so you will need to produce your artwork at a smaller scale.
• Either take photographs, create illustrations or use a combination to develop two images –
  one of fruit and one of vegetables.
  For each range you may choose an individual piece, dissected or partly sliced sections, or create a group of several pieces.
  Then identify any wording you might want to use.
• The most important things to remember are what the shopkeeper wants to achieve and who the message is for (the audience).
• The posters will be seen from quite a distance / visuals need to be clear and dynamic.
• Be especially conscious of the way you use colour to describe tone, shadow and surface marks

The Research

The image should appeal to both students and their parents, as well as the general shoppers visiting from the shops nearby. The students are still very young (primary), so many parents will probably pick them up. While doing that, the combine making chores and buying food.

Eating fresh, local and healthy is a trend and picked up by young people too. I want to emphasize on this in my designs. The fruits and vegetables should be as realistic and delicious looking as possible. I will go with photography as they represent the freshness and communicate clearly.

The Designs will need to be enlarged to be printed, so my first though is to use vectors in illustrator to create images that can be easily resized.  But if i can get high-quality images and photographs i would prefer to use them, as they speak a clear language and represent the “freshness” of the foods particularly well.

As for the Design itself, i want to combine the food with minimal typography. It should be bold and modern. I will use multiple fruits and vegetables instead of just one, as they should represent the variety the supermarket offers. And showing more increases the probability of showing the fruit the buyer likes the most.

The Visual Research

I searched for both pictures of Food and stores. I liked especially the second picture in the screenshot showing the “falling” fruits. The vibrance and movement, as well as the change in sharpness gives it a modern and even fresh look. The depth of it is great and it helps to attract visitors.

The Design Process

I started searching images for both fruits and vegetables. I added them to Photoshop and places them on a coloured background in A1 size. For the Background i took a light blue for the fruits, underlining their “freshness”. For the vegetables i took a ligh red. It gives a feeling of cooking (warm) and works great in combination with the tomatoes.

Once the fruits and vegetables were placed and original backgrounds removed, i’ve started to add a gaussian filter on each of them individually. The smaller the fruit, the bigger the blur effect. It helped to imitate a tridimensional feeling and depth. If a fruits color or vibrance was to different from the others, i adjusted both color levels and saturation (Kiwi)

I kept it fairly simple with the typography. A script type (Reklame) for the subtitel and a bolder Font (Balboa) for the main Titel, making it easy to see from far away. Additional ornamentals add a bit of structure and variation.

Final Design

I’m very happy with my final design. I believe they meet all requirements: Visible from afar, fresh, speaks to both children and their parents and encourages to buy and eat healthy.  (we don’t know the individual taste of the shopownwers, though)

I’m still not convinced if the fruit design would look better without the ornamentals and sun strokes.