8) Summery

Public surveys:

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?sid=0hjswf0pf4a4q1e560496

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?sid=7znr6y8kdzqj5mz564634

http://freeonlinesurveys.com/s.asp?sid=n28cdtkx42exvw2577029

Final design: alcoholic smoothie catering trailer, designed to look like a shabby wooden shack on a deserted island, with dry hay parasols as shelter in the seating area, crates and cushions as seating.

Extra activities: message in a bottle( sharing your leefest experience), paero towels purchases, shots served in fruit, coupons, promotional goodies such as straw hats.

Material used- All made out of recycled materials.

During the development process we created a few public survey’s to see which of our idea’s were most popular. As you can see the idea of a food stall was less popular than a alcohol stall, influencing our development work as we went with what our market research wanted and that was alcohol. The percentage of people that voted yes for a tropical themed cocktail rather than a alcoholic milkshake was higher, leading us to leave the alcoholic milkshake stand behind as we was made aware that the milkshakes was not connecting with our garden theme, they were just two idea’s sprung together.

At the beginning of our development process our team was adamant on creating a urban garden themed event, wanting to use a marquee tent. Hoping to create a mystical garden theme, however we began to find it difficult to make the conceptual connection between the drink and the theme. We realised the tent idea was a bad one, and went back to creating mood-boards to find a new design. This is were we began to think more outside the box, taking idea’s from the rainforest cafe, heading to a more jungle design. Looking into alternative options as well such as pie and mash stalls, body glitter and tapas stalls. We all seemed to like the body glitter idea, we proposed the jungle theme shakes with our staff being painted in animal printed body glitter. Once again we were faced with the same problem, how does a jungle link with alcohol? We began to look at our first inspiration by steam and rye, as they serve their drinks in very abstract glasses such as boots, fresh fruit, as well as looking into lola lo’s cocktail bar who use tiki glasses. Taking us to our next development stage, looking into the jungle’s fruit and natural resources which we could take and  use as cups, before we knew it we had guideline of what we were looking for. We wanted to use fresh fruit and combine it with alcohol, but putting it into a unique yet quirky glass to make us different from every other stall. On my mood-boards you will be able to see the different type of jungle resources I researched into to develop some glasses idea’s.

Once we decided on a beverage, the fresh alcoholic smoothie served in its original fruit, and funky glasses, along with shots served in fruit. We realised it wasn’t connecting again with the jungle theme. We went away to brainstorm, and realised we should go for a tropical theme, however the Hawaiian theme is very common nowadays therefore we wanted to make sure we stayed away from that image. Leading us to go to the more shabby side of the tropical theme, a castaway shack. Looking into the film with Tom Hanks it was clear it was not going to be a pristine catering trailer, we researched into beach shacks and could not help but notice that they were all very shabby. Taking us to our next idea of turning our trailer into a shack, but using all recycled materials even for the props, tables and seating, which in the long run will be more sustainable and create the shabby image we want to pull off in a beneficial way for the world and our budget. Due to leefests desire to take people away from their everyday lives and make them feel like they are in a bubble of fun we wanted to allow their customers another source of escapism. Giving the public a chilled, tropical island to stumble across during their festival experience, taking them away from all the green and mud, allowing them a few hours to regenerate in a tropical themed chill out zone in the day but at night we could offer them the party vibe as well.

As we began to develop design idea’s we stumbled across a lot of trials and errors, for example our tent soon turned into parasols, the parasols were going be recycled but due to health and safety it was to risky to make something that could fall and hurt a customer. Therefore we decided to hire the umbrellas instead, and found ones that fitted our image, as they were made of dry hay and wood. We discussed ways of creating the props such as the tables, we were thinking of wooden stumps to begin with but realised they were not going to fit in with our shack image, therefore we simply thought of wooden crates, which could have the cushions inside for customers to grab and sit on. We faced trouble with the seating, after a few mood boards Debbie suggested paero towels a spanish sheet that did not get any sand or dirt attach to it after being on the floor, we agreed to use this idea but it was hard to include into the event due to hygiene reasons as we had to consider washing and drying several towels at midnight in leefests washing facilites for the next day. To solve this we discussed as group that the paero towels should have a rent fee so we could cover the costs of the washing, and also a buying fee so if the public wanted to keep the towel they could.

After researching into castaways and the film castaway, we developed some extra activities for the event that people could participate in and help them feel apart of our castaway team. Such as a message in bottle, were we would recycle the bottles at the event and let people write a message of their leefest experience on the paper in the bottle and then stick it on our pin-board.

The lighting of event was very hard to put onto our model, we went through a few designs until we got the bright mix-matching coloured lettering, linking with the mis-matching wood with random colours painted on the wooden slabs here and there.

this one was our favourite design and we believed it would be a perfect match to our theme, however myself and charley visited the 3D model workshop in aldgate and the worker explained the difficulty in trying to build this, explaining there would be a lot of wires involved. Therefore we had to opt for a simpler way of lighting the events sign

The lighting throughout the event would only change once, during the day obviously we would use the suns natural rays, then in the evening we would have very soft lighting to create a relaxed atmosphere in the evening.

Overall our biggest development process was within the themes design, as we went from urban garden to jungle to tropical to a castaway shack. Secondly the drinks was one of the issues that stopped us from making that conceptual connection as we went from milkshakes to cocktails to fresh fruit smoothies. Once we found a theme that conceptually connected with our drink we found ourselves with castaway.

Group comments:

Charley Forsyth:

Working with Helen was a pleasure as she was able to coordinate everyone with the group and did so effectively. She was worked very hard on the paperwork and assisted me when i needed it. She communicates well within the group and is always there to help, she was only a phone call away. I would forward to working with her again.