The project started with choosing agriculture, food, and environment as a topic to expand on after the book ‘Woman on the Edge of Time,’ written by Marge Piercy and published in 1976. From this point, it came down to figuring out what aspect of this topic I wanted to discuss and how to convey it. Being a graphic design / french dual major in a liberal arts university, it only made sense to apply skills gleaned from the former. This would come through in the form of imagining an organization, and coming up with a visual identity for it, later followed by designing and developing a website.
Through the process, decisions were made every step of the way concerning the subject matter, what I wanted to say about it, and how to communicate it within a certain context. Type choice, whitespace, tone, art direction, and even motion were factors that had to be considered when thinking about developing an elegant yet accessible communication tool about agriculture for a future audience.
Identity
Going into the naming process, I knew I wanted to incorporate some of the vernacular used within the future setting of the book. One of the more common words used is ‘fasure,’ which feels like saying, ‘of course,’ in the context of the book’s dialogue. Alliteration follows this with the idea of growing natural food, and ‘Fasure, Fresh. ’ was born.
With the name, I experimented with various tools in ideating marks: brush pen, sketches, and a calligraphic pen were all used in exploration between purely typographic marks, then going on to symbols. For a dose of visual inspiration, I referenced some books. Part of the problem was consulting the book and this fairly broad topic, and figuring out what I wanted to say about it and who my audience would be.
After going through a number of sketches, I moved into Adobe Illustrator with the concept of two leaves forming an intersecting equality sign of sorts. Through iterating with textures, forms, colors, and typefaces, I arrived at the final logo and accompanying symbol — the later which evolved from leaves to form a sort of flower shape. The typeface (H&Fj’s Gotham) evokes a sense of elegance while still remaining friendly and approachable.
For the symbol itself, I went through a variety of changes exploring stroke weight, texture, and curve. After spending some time with a modulated stoke and then a stroke emulating a dry media, I reverted back to a monoline solid stroke, augmenting the flat angle on the tapering of the leaf. Placement and scale were then experimented with: whether the symbol was to be larger than the wordmark, whether the primary logo would have elements next to or above one another, and the possible appearance of another geometric element.
As a part of the identity, I explored color palettes. Inspired by the current slow living editorial movement, I looked towards photography styles seen in publications like Kinfolk, which emphasize fresh foods, sharing, and slow yet convivial environments. From the photos collected for this, I put together several color palettes for each. The palette settled on had a fresh and vibrant, but mature sense to it — complimenting the sentiment expressed through the typeface for the logotype.
Website
After the development of the primary visual identity came the information architecture (IA) of the site, and then coming up with comps. My personal experience in Ulster County within the Hudson Valley left me with ideas of CSAs, new regional currencies, community events, and local businesses (the sense of community here is fantastic and I absolutely love it).
Within the book, we see dialogues mentioning world luxuries consumed in strict limitation, having enough, population-wide participation in food production, life balance, and uses for various plants outside of consumption. I began thinking of the site as a resource for a specific community, winding up actually thinking of a future version of the Hudson Valley. Food availability throughout the year is an important factor in keeping food sources local and getting enough nutritional diversity in one’s diet. From this, I looked at websites and resources pertaining to the Hudson Valley to learn about what fruits and vegetables are available during the different seasons around the year.
The original IA consisted of: home page, seasonal growth/availability guide, worldly-foods with reduced nutritional value (coffees, teas, etc), slow living, and an ‘in case you missed it’ page with fictional news and legal updates pertaining to the Hudson Valley community in 2076. I took this and came up with a comp to work off of in photoshop.
The typefaces used within the site are Adobe Garamond Pro (serif) and Platelet (decorative sans-serif). Garamond ensures legibility through body type and perpetuates the elegant but accessible feel, while Platelet gives the design an edge that brings it a bit more into the future. Clean and beautiful web typography was a large focus within designing the site. The ethos I imagined does not include being overwhelmed in a commercialized structure, but instead emphasized a more minimal vision of long-lasting quality.
After the comp was far enough along, and because this was a quicker project, I moved directly into putting the design into code. The scope of the IA wasn’t large enough to warrant developing a WordPress theme, and I opted to use some simple PHP within my code instead, to regulate and make it easier to include the header and footer of the page.
The site came together through back and forth steps between structure and style. As my CSS (styling) came together, assembling the structure for secondary pages became increasingly easier. I opted towards a static site for the instant, with intentions to rehack my code and add responsive breakpoints so it is more user-friendly on mobile.
Embracing inclusivity and accessible design practices, alt tags were included on all images to ensure that a screen reader would be able to navigate the site. Colors used within the site were also checked for contrast to ensure usability even for users with sight deficiencies.
Images used within the site all came from Creative Commons free licensing sources, like Unsplash, Death to the Stock Photo, and Foodies Feed, which allow free use without necessarily requiring attribution.
Different areas of the site required unique styling. The seasonal growth page, for example, uses a custom list format and flexbox display. The page went through a few iterations to reach a point that was visually satisfying.
Pages like ‘nutrition’ and ‘slow living’ required creating content to fill the page. ‘Nutrition’ was able to make reference to the textbook used within EDS340, the book, ‘Woman on the Edge of Time,’ as well as an inventive narrative. Slow living looked at the movement itself, mindfulness, and current happenings within the Hudson Valley.
After checking over details, a working version of the site was ready to go and transferred over FTP from local development on my machine to a subdomain I set up.
Continuing Development
For the purposes of the final project within EDS340 at SUNY New Paltz, Fasure, Fresh is essentially complete. As a project in and of itself, I plan to continue refining whitespace, cleaning my code, cross-checking with browsers and operating systems, and adding responsive breakpoints.
For the brand itself, I am content with the logo design and am looking to come up with further applications, so that the project lives beyond the class and becomes a part of the work displayed in my portfolio.