Core Concepts- Exercise 6: Point of sale display
Exercise 6: Point of sale display
Your local green grocer has asked you to produce a point of sale display to go above the fruit and vegetables in their shop. They want the display to be seen from the street through the shop window to attract passing shoppers in order to boost their trade. The shop is in a small precinct which also houses a baker, a newsagent, an independent shoe shop and is on the route to and from a well respected primary school. The final reproduction size will be 2 x A1 landscape so you will need to produce your artwork at a smaller scale.
Wording: Before coming up with some ideas I decided to think about wording. Keeping Occam’s Razor in mind I thought what is important to be included? This will be a large display and I feel it should be minimal and concise in order to catch the eye of passers by.
Fruit, vegetables for sale
Fresh, organic, new, tasty, juicy
Names underneath? definitions?
Local, 5 a day, open today, come inside
Don’t forget: Fruit/Vegetables inside
I tested a Warhol style illustration in Photoshop with intentions to screen print and create it physically then edit further digitally, but when starting this I felt like it wasn’t the correct medium for the brief. I feel like it should look ‘clean’ and professional, be minimal but eye catching but clear as to what it is.
The screenshot below was done quickly/wasn’t aligned etc, was just as a quick reference.
To begin this project I started researching existing supermarket/grocery shop signs. They all tended to be clear, quite minimal, with good illustrations or photographs of the products. These are a few things I will keep in mind when moving forwards with my display. I intend to keep my sign minimal, and use bright colours to attract attention of passers by and look appealing to children, who could potentially be attracted by the sign themselves and point to an adult etc.
I researched existing posters/illustrations/artwork related to fruit and vegetables. I initially thought of Warhol’s banana and other fruit screen prints, this could possibly be something to look into as an idea. I also liked the idea of an illustrated ‘scene’ of fruit being cut etc. I continued to research other visuals and slogans.
I liked this ‘grid’ style layout from my ideas, and thought that it might work well for a display. It is clear, simple and minimal, I then began to test different illustration styles.
I had produced some personal work before in this triangle style and thought it could work for this. I am relatively new to illustrator and thought this may be a good way to start. I wanted the illustrations to be clear but abstract in their style and look different from what is usually seen, in order to draw in attention from passers by, but still remain to look appealing to customers. This method was very time consuming, but I wanted to produce a few illustrations for each fruit/vegetable category, and took this as a good chance to get to grips with Illustrator more. I decided that I didn’t like this aesthetic, and decided to try something different.
I then decided to try a more simple shape illustration style. I used cross sectioned fruit/vegetables images as a guide line when producing my illustrations. I thought to draw out the images initially, but I felt like I was able to gain the affect I wanted using this method. I wanted the images to be minimal using as little shapes as possible, in not exact shapes to display what the fruit/veg was in an interesting and eye catching way to attract people to the grocers, but still remain appealing.
I scanned some textures to use, a cotton rag cut off, and a screen print (that went wrong) on some textured paper which I thought made a nice affect. I then applied these textures along with a less textured paper layer in different positions of the fruit/veg depending on which I thought was most affective, for example a rougher texture for the skin of the avocado. I wanted to limit the textures used to these 3 to allow the illustrations to work well together as a group. I was still unsure at this point whether to use a grid layout style or collate the illustrations together in a different way.
I tested with a sort of ‘olympic ring’ layout style as I thought it would be familiar to people. I tested various fonts and eventually settled with something I quite liked. The green background I felt made the image look more ‘sickening’ than enticing, I think that the white looks cleaner and more professional. I then added a paper texture which I think works quite well with the illustrations. When doing and searching through fonts I had to try a composition like my original idea, in a grid, and include the parts I liked such as the square colour boxes in the corner.
Firstly I tried different positions for the fruit in the grid and found this to be the best one. I decided to use a Helvetica font as from my research I had noticed that most of the fonts were quite simple and bold. Helvetica I think is a generally known and trusted font that makes the display look more professional and enticing. I decided to include the slogan ‘Grab your 5 a day here’ instead of inside I was (stupidly) not thinking about the fact that it will be displayed above/near the fruit/vegetables so ‘here’ makes more sense. I feel like this slogan works better than others such as fresh/organic/tasty/juicy as it draws onto a slogan everybody knows and is familiar with “5 a day keeps the doctor away.”
I decided on using a paper texture over the text, behind the illustrations and over the colour squares to draw the display together and have some continuity. I feel like this may make it more appealing to a younger eye as well as an adult because it is less harsh than a normal bold font. I then went onto arranging and applying this layout to the vegetable illustrations, changing the squares colours to ones related to those illustrations colours.
Finals:
I sent my finals to a couple of friends and asked for critical feedback. One friend said he liked some of the illustrations but not others (didn’t like the strawberry or the pepper) but also said it could be the layout of the grid/colouring of them. He didn’t think that the slogan was large or clear enough to be read quickly by passers by. My other friend said that she preferred the vegetable display but thought that less or one vegetable might look better for the display.
Neither of my friends like design/art so I found this interesting as they are looking at it from a natural viewpoint, the feedback was less specific than when I have asked in the Graphic Design google chat but it was interesting. Overall I feel like there is something missing, I am not sure what whether it is as one friend said the illustrations are weak and not as good/stylistic as I hoped. I was aiming for a simple visual that displayed the products well to passers by. I feel like the display would be quite affective and work well in the grocery store, it is quite minimal with in my opinion enough information on it but I am not happy with my end result, maybe I should’ve tried a different approach with a singular illustration or a scene of the fruit/vegetables in a bowl etc. I am pleased to begin to use illustrator more and look forward to improving on this with future projects.
