Ally's Process Blog

Yes, I know I skipped project two. It is still very much in development, but I did get it first, so just hold on for that.

Project three, however, is coming along!

Here is the basis: Meals on Wheels of Boulder is now offering homemade soups! They are currently sold out of our kitchen, but will be sold out of the grocery store (niche market) once that is up and running (July, fingers crossed. I think we are all really excited!). For $10 you can get a quart, we have 10 flavors (flavors? I’m super not sold on that word for the soups. Flavors sounds like… frosties or crushed ice or something. It is too artificial. Maybe… options? Varieties? I don’t know), and they are available from 10am to 2pm on weekdays. Oh, also you can’t just eat them. You have to heat them up first. This was another small language struggle. Do we call them “take out?” “Heat and eat?” We settled on “ready to be warmed up and enjoyed at home.” We’ll see how that goes.

First stage, sketching and planning. I don’t usually post photos of this because #1. I am not an artist, and #2. they aren’t exactly fascinating. But given that this is a process blog not a perfection blog, and this is the first step in the process, here you are.

Sketching done, I moved to Illustrator. I do have to say, if I try to go straight to Illustrator without something on paper, I get terrible… I don’t know, designer’s block? Staring at the blank document just doesn’t go well. I need to have an outline, otherwise, I am very perplexed and the quality of my work goes way down. Don’t really know why that is.
Anyway, moved to Illustrator. Part of the challenge here is that we don’t actually have any images of the new soups (that is a later problem), so I am using stand-in images and designing temporary signs/media posts for the meantime.

Personally, I like the second design if we aren’t going to use images. I like the fourth design if we are going to use images.

I’ll be working on some outlines for media posts a little later today (which will be their own post. When written, it’ll be linked here). The other big hurdle on this one is going to be, again, food photography. I’d love to get pictures of all the soups, but that might be too much of a pain for the kitchen and Kate. At least one lovely photo is necessary, though.
I’d ideally like:
1. Images of all of the soup flavors in bowls.
2. Images of the containers that the soup comes in.
3. Images of someone eating the soup.

When I have some images, I’ll be able to update the pictures on the signs, which will be good (since right now, the image is actually ratatouille, I think). I’ll probably post some of the more lovely food photos, as well as any updates on the project.

Update July 1st:

We did our soup photography! We actually did it quite a while ago, and I forgot to update this post. Luckily, photos don’t spoil if you forget about them, so I can add them now and they’ll look just as fresh and tasty as they did the day we took them.

Here are some of our best shots:

And here are the shots incorporated into a few of the designs for posters (and a visual menu, which was much trickier than I thought it was going to be):

While none of these posters are printed yet, I don’t see that they are going to be in the foreseeable future. We have a lot going on at the moment (as always, apparently), so really pushing our soup sales is going to be a later problem. It seems unlikely that I’ll still be working with Meals on Wheels of Boulder at that point, so for now, I’m going to call this project closed!

Cheers.

Project 1 is done! We sent it to the printers yesterday.

Here, I’ll go through a quick top-to-bottom on the design and process, skimming over the stuff I covered in-depth in other posts.

Summary
Objective:
1. To thank our donors
2. To ask them to help us finding new clientele for Project Homecoming.
{Learn more here}

Form:
Mailer. Folded in half in a standard sized envelope with formal thank you letter from CEO.

Design Objectives:
1. Stay consistent with brand image and voice
2. Visually appealing and colorful
3. Accurate representation of what clients will get with Project Homecoming
4. Able to be folded in half OR cut in half to be given to a new client

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We then took some pictures of the packaged meals that the Project Homecoming patients actually receive. {Learn more here}

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There were a few corrections from Francea (CEO) on the draft in terms of copy and images. Kate pointed out that we should start with “You” rather than “Without generous donors like yourself.” I learned that it is good practice to start with a positive and to start with “you” in donation thank you letters. Francea changed some working and added a line. She also noted that we should use a photo of someone who would be using Project Homecoming (so, someone who just got out of a hospital). We don’t have a photo like that, so I spent some time hunting around on open source stock image sites and found a few. I’m a little bummed that we didn’t use one of the super cute mum and baby images I found, but this one was Kate’s choice. We settled on this design and copy. Hopefully it is a hit with the donors!

Food photography is great, right? Easy. Just snap a photo with the old iPhone, throw it on Instagram, and wait for the likes to roll in.

Not so much when you are playing at professional food photography, fully equipped with a “real” camera, high expectations, and no clue what you are doing (naturally).

The objective: take photos of the bagged lunches that we send to our clients so that we have a realistic depiction of what clients in Project Homecoming will be getting.

The challenge: make them look stunningly professional and delicious, but also accurately show what makes up our “bagged lunches.” Make sure we look more like a catering company than a food bank (we are not a food bank…but we aren’t really a catering company either).

So, the question comes down to: How do I take a photo of a bagged lunch/lunch in a bunch of containers and have it look tasty and meet standards?

Kate (who is my supervisor—not sure I’ve mentioned her by name before) and I thought that photographing the mediterranean salad might be nice because it is colorful. She brought a nice camera, a SAD light (to mimic natural light, if the light wasn’t good. Luckily, we didn’t need it.), some cloth napkins, and a number of paper bags. I brought…myself, my lack of experience, enthusiasm, and some pretty intense precedent research.

Through my research, this is what I learned about food photography in general:

• Natural light is the way to go. Minimize shadows (unless they help the composition) and highlights. An overcast day is the best option. (It wasn’t overcast, but we did the best we could.)
• Plate the food beautifully. If it doesn’t look like art on the plate, it isn’t going to look like art in the photo.
• Usually taking the photo from “eye-height” like you are sitting at a table looking down at the food isn’t the best angle.
• You want the food to look warm, not too shiny, and not too gritty. Photoshop can help with some (but not all) of this.
• Use a neutral (wood, white, or black) background.

I took some experiment photos over the weekend with my not amazing iPhone. This is what I ended up with. I think they actually increased my apprehension, rather than decreasing it, but hey, it is a learning process!

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This is all well and good, but I also needed to take into account the fact that I would be working in boxed lunches, not just lovely food-arranged-on-bamboo-cutting-boards lunches. Luckily, one of our chefs (Todd) did a wonderful job with artfully “plating,” so that wasn’t something I had to struggle with. It should be said that there are certainly some skeptics here about if it is possible to photograph a bagged lunch and have it look nice. I firmly believe that it is. Can I do it? I don’t know, but I also did research on precedent for that, and there were some lovely examples out there. What I learned from that particular research was that low eye level or completely bird’s eye seemed to be best, and it was really important to fill the container all the way. Empty space looks “cheap.”

The first day, I shot the mediterranean salad, and the second, beef stroganoff. This is what I ended up with when shooting the med salad:

There were definitely some learnings that came out of the first shoot:

• We need square photos. They work better with our marketing material.
• Black background > light colored or textured background
• Forks are way too shiny.
• Make sure that you have the whole tray in the photo. It is pretty annoying to have a good photo with a 1/2 cut off tray.

(I ate the model lunch after. And it was very, very tasty. )

For the stroganoff, I tried to follow my own advice. Here are a few of the best:

There were many others, which I shall perhaps upload later, but this is all I have on my computer right now—the rest are on my work machine.

We’ve done one more shoot—barbeque chicken—but I haven’t edited yet. (I think it looks pretty icky…but maybe photoshop can help?) I’ll update regardless.

So, after all this photo-ing, I did update the donor coupons. Once I get the final go-ahead from Kate and Francea (who is the CEO), I’ll post again with the end result. 🙂

I have my first project! Meals on Wheels is in a large fundraising effort (which, as I learned today, is called a capital campaign) because we got a new building (stunning) and are trying to raise the money to pay off the rest of the loan—while simultaneously funding all of our normal meal delivery programs.

So, we have some donors that we need to thank, and we need new clients. Another thing that I have recently learned: Meals on Wheels is a little bit like a shark… we need to be constantly moving to stay alive. It is a constant battle to find/recruit/discover new clients within the Boulder area. We know they are out there and need help, but it can be hard to reach our target audience.

Thus, a double edged task: 1. Thank the donors. 2. See if they can help us find new clients for our Project Homecoming initiative. (Hey! Recently out of the hospital for any reason? Need help feeding yourself while you get back on your feet? Check out Project Homecoming.)

I’ve got a couple of preliminary card designs:

Also, yes, I know that the top parts of the front of the card are upside-down. They are supposed to be because the card is delivered folded in half. I really hope I logic-ed that out right in my head…

They still need development/perfection. The spacing isn’t perfect, and the images aren’t finalized. We REALLY want to do a photoshoot of the delivered meals, rather than the plated meals. They might not be as pretty, but they are also a lot less misleading. That is a big goal, but we are under a bit of a time crunch to get these cards out, so we’ll see if that happens. BUT, if it does, that’ll be my first experience with food photography!! Got tips? Lemme know, please.

I’ll update as things change. Cheers.

It is summer 2020, and the world is on fire. COVID is still flourishing and centuries of racial tension have burst into the public eye in the form of riots, protests, social media movements, and other general unrest.

I, however, am doing rather well. How, you may ask, is that possible? I am fortunate—my internship didn’t go up into smoke like so many others. Why? Because I am working for Meals on Wheels of Boulder, a 501(c)3 that, through a miracle of mad logistics, delivers “home-cooked” and nutritionally balanced meals to several hundred needy people in Boulder.

I have finally (after about three years of trying) managed to find a spot at a nonprofit! The internship is through the CU PIIE program, which adds an extra layer of complexity (thanks, CU.), but a nonprofit, nonetheless. I’m still in the process of onboarding completely (figuring out technology, who’s who in the office, and how the whole delivery system works), but so far, I love it. I appreciate and enjoy knowing that I am doing work for a cause that I believe in, I am thrilled about sharing an office and having someone to bother whenever I want (thanks for your patience, Kate!), all of the other folks seem passionate and experienced, and the new office is stunning. Yeah, I’m pretty pleased.

So, (and my apologies—I should have gotten to this sooner. I’m not following good persuasive writing guidelines) what is this? This is going to be my process blog and documentation for the projects I work through in this internship. It is going to house all of the cool things that I learn and do. Hopefully, it is going to be something I can link to my portfolio and be proud of.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to learning new skills, gaining experience with old ones, and working for such a wonderful organization.

Current questions: Can I use the mow (Meals on Wheels) logo on this page? On my portfolio? That would be pretty handy.