Portfolio categories: <span>Content Creation</span>

Shrub Visual Identity Refreshement

At the end of 2018, SHRUB Cooperative, alongside with their expansion, by the opening of their second venue in Edinburgh (Zero Waste Hub, on Bread St.) and the (re)launch of their various projects, decided to go through a “Brand Refreshment”, of which I coordinated and the chance of giving my substantial contribution and .

The Old Logo

the old logo had become widely recognised and used extensively across the various projects and events that SHRUB organises, and despite being greatly in-line with the message and the visuals of SHRUB, it presented various issues: due to its complexity it was difficult to place it consistently in the tremendous number of promotional material (both printed and online) that SHRUB produces.

Another issue was the inconsistent use of different variants of the main logo but especially of the single-project logos, across different promotional material and campaigns

The Process

The process I proposed was to tackle the issue by starting from the main logo that effectively functions as an umbrella for the other derived projects, and works from there to give SHRUB a new visual identity, which would be still recognisable and still aligned with the cooperative’s mission.

Being SHRUB a cooperative that works per consensus, therefore this process has been a communal one.

First I collected, during a brainstorming session, the keyword that member associate with SHRUB, creating a mindmap of the “brand sentiment” which had being used as the base of the subsequent development of the logos.

for the actual logos’ design I also considered a few other guidelines:

• They needed to be an evolution of the old visual and not a complete change-over.
• They needed to highlight the effort that SHRUB put in the development and promotion of Circular Economy and reuse.
• They needed to be as sustainable as possible: printed with minimal ink usage and easy to used in risoprinting; effective when used in their mono-colour and white-space versions.

Then begin the actual process of design and revision vetted by the SHRUB community. For the main logo:

And for the single project versions:

The New Logos

The final version was ultimately decided upon and here are the results of this “Refreshment”:

Christmas Market Food Collection 2018

Freshly arrived in Edinburgh I got straight away in touch with Food Sharing Edinburgh.

The first food saving event I have been involved in was the collection of food excess at the end of the world-famous Edinburgh Christmas Markets, that take place each year on the East Princes St Gardens, right under the castle.

It has been eye-opening!

I was stunned by the actual quantity of food we were able to save and that if not collected would have ended in the trash the next day. Just check it out:

It was also quite an exercise to go up and down, for four trips, the numerous stairs of the many alleyways around Royal Mile, with tens of kg of food!

Right after this astonishing experience, I decided to create the following video infographic to promote this endeavour and to try and increase the awareness of the general public to this issue.

Zero Waste Edinburgh Proposal Leaflet

After designing the logos for the Zero Waste Edinburgh circular project, I had the responsibility of creating a leaflet highlighting the environmental issues that Edinburgh currently faces and with the key notion of what this endeavour tires to achieve.

I approached this task following two self-made guidelines:

1. It needed to explain the issues and the project in an easy way.
2. It must have been produced and printed in the most sustainable method possible.

We decided to employ a technique called “riso printing” which is a printing technique that uses soy-based inks, rather than toner and use rollers machines that can produce a large number of copies with a vastly reduced impact.

That’s why I opted to use simple lines and simple icons to reduce ink usage and to get the best quality results (riso printing can get tricky and quite time consuming for work with heavy coverage, which needs to be dried after each colour pass).

 ZWE_leaflet

Ryan’s Supervalu Social Media Content Research

During my master in Food Marketing at UCC, my class had the marvellous chance to collaborate on different “real life” project with the Musgrave group, Ireland biggest retail company.

The first one of these projects was a qualitative research focused on local supermarkets, about investigating customer’s preferences on social media content and sentiment, to create the basis of their future social media strategy.

My team was commissioned with the task of analysing the customer base of “Ryan’s Supervalue”, in Togher, just outside Cork city centre.

We conducted various one-to-one interviews, trying to elicit some significant trends and information both on customers traits and on their interests, that could help to make informed decisions on the kind of contents that could better engage Ryan’s Supervalu audience.

It has been a stimulating but often challenging task, due mainly to the lack of time shoppers were able to dedicate to answer our questions and the overall older age of the customer base.

Nonetheless, we were able to present compelling and strong findings:

• In Togher, there is a strong sense of Community. And Customers wanted to this to be reflected on Ryan’s Supervalue social media profiles. Especially highlighting the commitment that the supermarket was already putting in community projects.
• Customers were still interested in getting informed about deals and sales, not only by traditional means (flyers and in-store signage) but also through social media.
• Shoppers were particularly engaged on social media tips and recipes, especially focused on organic products and healthy lifestyle.
•  More and more of the “older” population, thanks to what is called social media normalisation, have virtual profiles and use them regularly (especially Facebook) to stay in touch between with their larger family and friends. And they wanted to learn how to better use these instruments, which prompted the chance of organising social media workshops.

You can check Ryan’s Supervalue profiles to see how these findings have been actually implemented in their social media strategy.

Food Sharing Hub Promo Video

The Food Sharing hub is going to be first Scotland’s food excess supermarket. It functions as:

• A centralised ‘excess food supermarket’, running on ‘Pay As You Feel’ donations.
• A storage and distribution depot from which to deliver to our partner charities.
• A space to educate and inspire the people of Edinburgh about food waste issues!

This project has been a really fun one!

As a Communication volunteer for SHRUB and the Zero Waste Edinburgh project, I have been involved in all the steps (except the editing) of this promotional video, which introduces the Food Sharing Hub, first Scotland’s food excess supermarket.

I personally think that it does an excellent job at describing the food issues the FSH tries to tackle and how it will go about them!

Remember: no food was waste during the making of this video!

The Food Sharing Hub is currently located inside The Zero Waste Hub (22 Bread St, Edinburgh EH3 9AF). Come visit it!