Chieres for the bieres…

Recently, ribot sponsored an Brighton-based event called £5 App, kindly supplying some thirst-quenching beer to all the attendees. Though this normally wouldn’t deserve its own blog, here at ribot towers, we decided to do something a little different…

Seeing the opportunity to generate some brand recognition, and have a little fun in the process, we wondered how we could make this beer special? How could we get the ribot brand out there?

There was a veritable flood of ideas but time was a major mitigating factor. We only had a couple of days to design, produce and implement any concept we decided to run with…and there was no time to start another if the first didn’t work!

Customising the beer bottles in some way seemed the way to go. Ideas ranged from the simple:
- Tagging each beer with a ribot business card;
- Hanging an info-graphic leaflet from the beer depicting our team, concepts and processes…

…to the more complex:
- Attaching DIY origami to the bottles so that each attendee could build their own paper-craft, ribot branded, creature or plane;

…to the downright crazy:
- creating a weathered-terrain look on the beer bottle surface with tacked-on modeling moss and mini trees sourced from model railway component manufacturers.

But finally, the proverbial lightbulb lit above Jerome’s head and the idea to completely re-brand the beer was born. This seemed like a simple idea at the time; all we would need to do is produce a few ribot-branded (ri-branded?) labels and stick them to the bottles. As time went on, we slowly realised that this would require a lot more work than we had imagined, but by then it was too late to turn back!

With haste, Jerome and Jonathan started researching current beer brands: What exactly was there on your standard beer label? Was there anything we had to legally include, even on a project of this scale?

We decided on three main label elements for our re-branded beer: a front label, a back label (containing a description of each part of the ribot process) and, if there was time, a label for the neck of the beer. Jerome quickly got to formalising some of the ideas we had.

The central concept was to show our process, which we split into three main parts, portrayed by the style of the beer label. These were the results:

Step 1: The concept and ideas phase (Quick sketches and rough mock-ups):

Step 2: The formal wireframe phase:

…and Step 3: The finalised design:

So, with final designs done and our ribot process implemented, we started treading forth into new territory. We had to get the label elements printed, cut and affixed to the side of 80 bottles. As simple as this may initially sound, there were several problems we faced. The main one was a limitation of time available. We had just over 1 day to get this done and having a professional printer rush the job through would cost us over double what the beer cost; following a round of phone calls, printers also needed a lot longer to get things finished. We also wouldn’t have been able to test the printed results until the very last minute, so if there were any problems it would’ve been goodnight Vienna!

And so we decided to put our A3 Deskjet printer to the test. The results were, thankfully, great. Initially we planned to use three types of paper, one for each stage of the design process, increasing in quality:

+ Plain paper for the sketches;

++ Matt photo-paper for the wireframes;

+++ High Quality gloss paper for the final design;

So we got in some samples and quickly tested them. The plain paper was far too see-through when taped to the bottle – even the super thick stuff!

The matt photo-paper, however, worked great and provided excellent results so we decided to use it for stage one as well!

With a secure method of adhesion and a way to protect the labels from condensation still eluding us, Jonathan proposed to laminate the labels and simply use double-sided sticky tape to keep them down. With less than a day to go we decided to quickly test the idea out, and it seemed to work! Woo!

With that all done, the 80 bottles of beer needed to be purchased and individually labelled, and so for a trip to Sainsbury’s…

After a torrential downpour during the journey back to ribot Towers, a soggy Antony, Jerome and girlfriend RoxyBird began the long task of drying out, cutting out, applying tape and attaching all the labels to the bottles (in that order). Finally, after working into the oui-hours of the morning, ribot beer was born and ready to take its first steps in the world. Fast-forwarding to the next day, the beers were very well received at the event, and were a great talking point for all.

Overall, it was a great mini-project, during which we took ourselves, for the majority of the project, away from the computer, and towards the scissors and glue. For a day and a bit, ribot totally changed into a industrial setup; everything became physical, real, and subject to different constraints, like moisture, stickiness, and process hyper-optimisation.

Though the main aim of the project was to showcase our design process, it was incredibly interesting to extend and augment this process away from conventional user interfaces, and to see how we work when faced with a more physical, industrial process. Needless to say, the project was a great success and we had a lot of fun doing it.

To conclude, here’s a few things that we found out from the beer label-making process:

1. Of course, it’s not only user interfaces that need designing for interaction:
1.1 we had to redesign our neck tops so they wouldn’t fall off during drinking.
1.2 people would be holding the bottle for prolonged periods so, what with the condensation, we had to make sure the print for the final concept stayed on the label and not transfer to peoples’ hands.
1.3 Also that ‘keen’ fingers wouldn’t be able to easily pick our labels off (This was documented during the evening: attempts were made but fingers proved thankfully futile).

2. We could really speed up production after optimising our process:
2.1 Everyone had their role in the production line; we spent a bit of time dividing up the tasks into roles that would allow for most effective handover between people
2.2 We turned the desks into a production line, where the label elements in their various stages would be passed down the line
2.3 Having more people work on the line helped improve morale:
2.3.1 We had a massive stack of uncut label sheets and a load of unlabeled beers on the table, so for each worker to be able to visually see a noticeable reduction in the remaining amount of effort needed as time went on certainly acted as a motivator
2.3.2 With greater numbers of workers, it was noticeable that song-singing became more prevalent, helping boost efforts and reduce fatigue.

3. Testing became incredibly important if we were to find issues early and finish on time:
3.1 Good testing of materials at the start meant we had less problematic variables to consider as the process went on.
3.1.1 We found that after testing a labeled bottle by putting it in the fridge for a few hours, and then taking it out, a few hours later the beer label, even with all its double-sided tape glory, started to unpeel quite dramatically due to the condensation. Following this test, we built in an extra bit of focus for the taping bit of the process.

To conclude, a job well done! So chieres for the bieres!