Placement / Holden & Sons Advertising

2 Day Placement - Holden & Sons 

I did my high school work experience back in 2006 with this company, before I really even knew anything about graphic design, so I contacted them again about going back to get another experience now I actually know about graphic design and the industry. I found this industrial research very useful to give me an understanding of what it is like to work in a small studio and has helped me to decide that this is ideally what I would want to do after uni rather than being freelance, as before I was unsure.

Screenshot of website & Logo.

Day 1.

At Holden & Sons Advertising agency, I got to work on a live brief for Kellogg's Rice Krispies squares, creating floor stickers (based on the current vintage type theme) to be used in supermarkets to increase the point of sale. They were happy with the design ideas and sent them back to the client. 

I started with some research of the squares bars, finding out about the flavours available and looking at examples of advertising they have previously used.

Flavours to be advertised:

- Rocky Road

- Chocolate Caramel

- Totally Chocolatey Mint

- Totally Chocolatey

Colour Scheme: CMYK+White [ and overlapping colours created by transparency]
Fonts: Fonts to be used from a book of vintage fonts containing a disc of fonts available to be used commercially

Initial Drawings of square floor sticker:

I have gone with an optical illusion theme to go with the idea of drawing people in to the square - this is a flat curve illusion which I found in a book and then carefully re-created on illustrator, creating a quarter of the design and then copying and flipping this to complete the square. I decided on a yellow background as it is still bright and attention grabbing but the text will also be able to be seen on top.

Here I've played about with adding the text that was decided on on to the square, looking at existing examples of Kellogg's advertising for inspiration to ensure that the designs will match in with their current identity.

One of the good things about working in a small studio is having others around who can give you their opinion and offer advice about the work you have created, which I found really useful, as sometimes you don't spot things yourself.

I had designed this without the chocolate, before someone suggested I tried making chocolate splats to relate to the 'totally chocolatey' theme.

I've also added the catch phrase, "It's all lies... they're not even square!" onto the sticker.

The next thing I did was a Chocolate Splat Tutorial that I found online, to make it more obvious that it was supposed to be chocolate as it didn't look like it before.

I think the splats look much better with this effect. The next step was to correct the positioning of the text.

After feedback from others, I've also made the word chocolate on the sticker appear to be made from chocolate.

This is where I was up to at the end of the first day.

Day 2.

The next day we had heard back from the client and they wanted the wording to be changed so this meant re-arranging the layout of the square.

These are footstep stickers containing the wording asked for by the clients to guide the shoppers from the end of the aisle to the product.

Featuring the same vintage type style as the rest of the designs. Each footstep is representing a different flavour of squares chocolate.

Final Development Designs

Square Floor Sticker

Footstep Stickers

Security Shroud in the style of newspaper placards - with an 'it's all lies' saying on it.

 I enjoyed working in a creative environment which I found really motivating and learning from others, such as copywriters and animators. I have been invited back and will complete a week over reading week.