Harvest of the Month

My senior project was built around the concept of Alabama Farm to School Harvest of the Month program. The state of Alabama was not involved in this project nor were any of its departments, this work is conceptual only. I developed a full campaign, including posters, stickers, activity book, packaging, social media campaign, web and print advertising, and website. In addition I designed a logo and identity for the Farm to School office.

I came up with this idea because I have a friend who used to work at the department of agriculture, coordinating farm to school programs. She would tell me that they had few developed materials to provide to the schools. We talked about working on something together but she left that job shortly after and it never came to fruition. I liked some of the design concepts I had come up with, and I decided to develop the idea and make it into my senior project.

I designed a responsive website, built with the help of a programmer using bootstrap, a column-based system that is completely responsive. It can be viewed on computer, iPad, or phone without issue. It was also a good chance for me to reacquaint myself with my HTML and CSS skills, and I was able to build the website exactly how I wanted it.

You can experience the project through the website, www.alharvestofthemonth.com

The first pieces that I used to build this campaign were this set of mostly hand drawn patterns that I made. I decided to use two typefaces, Giza and Futura PT. I was very inspired by the work of designer Aries Moross, seen in this poster. I chose isolated images of produce, as you see in these pictures. I also incorporated coloring pages, stickers, and photos of the farmers.

For my brand identity, the first thing I made was a logo. I went for a literal interpretation of Alabama Farm to School - using images of Alabama, a Farm, and a School. This logo is hand drawn.

Building on the logo, I created a business card, envelope, and letterhead. Each incorporates the scene from the logo.

The posters were part of my original brainstorm, and are my favorite part of the campaign. These are created to hang in school cafeterias, so that students know what they will be eating that day. There are 12 of them, one for each month. They are eight and a half by eleven for ease of printing. The contrast of the bright colors, vibrant photographs, and chunky text are designed to be eye-catching.

One of the activities my friend often did when she visited schools was taste tests. These stickers are designed to be used for that activity, as I believe many elementary students will be motivated to try something if there’s a sticker involved.

Here is the cover for the activity book, which is meant for children to take home and use with their caregivers.

The first harvest of the month is broccoli, and this section sets up the pattern that will be repeated for the rest of the book. The left page is a full image of the produce, taken directly from the posters. There is a recipe, an introduction to the farmer or farmers, and a ‘tastes’ section. There are stickers in the back of the book with various food descriptions so students can choose what they think each harvest tastes like.

On the second spread for each produce, there is a coloring page, a how it grows section showing each produce from seed to harvest, and a couple of fun facts.

For packaging, I thought about the materials that would need to be delivered to schools -the items we just saw posters, ‘I tried it’ stickers, and activity books. I created boxes that could be used to send these items. Each box has a different harvest on it.

I have developed a series of four posts to be posted one per week during the month, corresponding to that month’s harvest.
The first is a gif that introduces this month’s harvest, in this case we’re using tomatoes. The concept of the produce dancing and swapping places is used in other visual components of the campaign.
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The second post will introduce this month’s farmers, and will point followers to the website to learn more about them.

The third post is built from the ‘how it grows’ segment from our activity book, informing caregivers that this month their students are learning about how tomatoes grow.
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And finally, the fourth post is photos of the students engaging with the harvest, in this case, images from a field trip to a local farm.