Brief: To come up with a brand and solution for a social cause of our choice and design a brand guidelines book.
I chose this cause because I had seen a video that went viral in 2015, where marine biologists remove a piece of garbage from a turtle's nose with painstaking efforts. And since I have a pet turtle, it specially struck me and I wanted to address this problem. To do this, I started off by collecting secondary and primary data.
Research
Chosen social cause: Plastic straws affecting life under water.
I sketched plenty if options for the logo, and after shortlisting a few, I tried digital explorations as shown below. Since my topic revolved around the harmful effects of straws, I wanted to show some characteristic of a straw in my logo.
Logo Explorations
This campaign is to spread awareness on how straws can affect humans indirectly, in the form of cancer. The goal is to let the viewers be shocked when they first read the headline, making them curious as to find out the reason, which upon closer look they can find the answer to.
Campaign 2A
The second part of the campaign are the billboards that directly suggests that drinking through a straw can cause cancer. Plastic straws are a petroleum by-product which is harmful for the human body as it contains several toxins and carcinogens. And by using straws in drinks, it gives access to leach into drinks and enter the human body.
Campaign 2B
Brand Guidelines
Shortlisted Logo
Campaign 1 is about spreading awareness on how plastic straws affect life under water. The concept is to show illustrated animals that are affected the most, and use the element of straw in that illustration. This campaign targets animal lovers. These set of posters boldly says to reject straws and a piece of information is given about that particular animal that's illustrated.
Campaign 1
Below is the final logo for the brand, it is blue in colour because it signifies water, where the straws eventually end up. It is bold and powerful which promotes the goal to reduce the usage of straws and say 'NO' to straws.
Below is the symbol for No More Straws, it consists of 3 transparent stripes, which gives it a texture of a bendy straw and represents the 3 principle elements it affects: Humans, Animals and Nature.
Based on the secondary research done, I found out that people have been using straws since 7000 years ago. People had to use it to filter out the pesky insects that found their way into people’s cups at night. For Western folk, the practice really took off in 1888 with the invention of the paper straw. Not too long after that, the spread of contagious diseases such as polio and tuberculosis led to a fear of contaminated glassware, and with it, a perceived necessity for drinking straws.
Plastics were actually made to help animals, they were used as a replacement to the elephants’ ivory tusks, but now they are overused due to durability and reasonability, that it's actually ending up killing animals on land and under water.
Why was plastic invented?
Why was straw invented?
Drawbacks of plastic
”Most straws today are made from a petroleum-based plastic called polypropylene. This means straws represent yet another product that requires fossil fuel extraction.” (Alternet, 2017) Petroleum plastics last forever; and is essentially the same substance that fuels cars.
Proposed solution
After this brief research, there are a couple of solutions that could help make a difference in this world. The major part of the solution is to create awareness about how plastic straws affect the health of humans and animals alike, and the benefits of gulping and sipping drinks rather than sucking them. The second part is to give a solution to this problem and that is to use edible straws. There is a company in the UK, Herald plastic, which manufactures edible straws. Even Starbucks uses cookie straws for some of their drinks. But since these are all flavored straws, there could be straws that are made from the ingredients that Bakey’s uses to have plain tasteless straws.
Drawbacks of alternate materials
There are eco friendly materials, which can be used in place of plastic, like, glass, metal, bamboo, straw, pasta, and paper. But they do have certain disadvantages like, durability, after taste, cost, etc. which is why people don’t buy these.
Findings from primary research
Through this research, it was seen that people in Mumbai are not aware about the ill effects of using plastic straws or how they are affecting the lives in the ocean. People are not willing to spend a little more on eco-friendly products when they can get products made of plastic for a cheaper price.
I really enjoyed working on this project, there was so much I got to take away. From ideation for names, identity design, working on different campaigns, trying to package straws, to executing the brand guidelines book, I got to learn a lot. I realised how to categorise different audience groups for the campaigns, how a particular campaign might not work for someone. Selecting the type of cover and paper weightage for the book was a bit difficult, and after the book was all printed, I observed that the pages were a bit too thin. Working on this project made me realise that I really like ideating on campaigns.
Learning Outcome
The last part of this project that I worked on was packaging for straws that are provided in restaurants. I've used the guerrilla marketing technique. On the packaging a simple statement will be written, that is, using it can harm animals or cause cancer.
Packaging
Other Projects
Branding / Campaigns / Packaging
Identity Design
UI