Recently my design friend Carli and I embarked upon a large side project together – making a lemonade stand for Restaurant Day, an event where anybody can make a pop-up restaurant for a day.
We hand-mixed three exotic flavors, created a booth with bunting and handmade signage, and even made a promotional video for our endeavor. Click here see recipes and photos from our lemonade stand adventure.
Recently my design friend Carli and I embarked upon a large side project together – making a lemonade stand for Restaurant Day, an event where anybody can make a pop-up restaurant for a day.
We hand-mixed three exotic flavors, created a booth with bunting and handmade signage, and even made a promotional video for our endeavor. Click here see recipes and photos from our lemonade stand adventure.
Four times a year Restaurant Day occurs around the world, where anybody can create a pop-up restaurant for a day. In Copenhagen usually 30 or so teams participate, resulting in a plethora of interesting food options for the day which you can find via a handy app.
In March of 2013, my Australian design friend Carli, her husband Wouter and I toured the booths of Restaurant Day Copenhagen. We drank koldskål on Queen Louises Bridge, tried champagne sorbet in a Nørrebro courtyard, and had a 3-course meal on the street near St. Hans Square accompanied by a Cuban band.
We had a fantastic time and vowed to participate with our own booth at the next Restaurant Day. Our contribution would be…A LEMONADE STAND.
Like any over-eager adult purveyors of handcrafted lemonade, we made a short video promoting our Lemonade Stand. If you’ve ever wondered how lemonade was made, this video reveals all. Thanks to the team at Jip Jip for animation and Matthew Matthew for the music clip.
Carli and I perfected our homemade lemonade syrups to taste just so. We even employed the help of a small team of taste testers from Holland (Wouter & Family) to give us feedback on our initial recipes.
Each flavor was sold for 20kr (about $3.50) with an special upgrade to a “Grandpa’s Lemonade” (hint: add gin) for 40kr. We also shared the recipes with visitors so they could make their own homemade lemonade.
Lemon & Lavender
– in a saucepan: 1 part sugar + 1 part water + 1 tablespoon lavender
– simmer 5 mins and then cool
– juice 2 lemons
– drain lavender bits out, add lemon to make syrup
– mix syrup (approx a shot glass, or to taste) with a cup of bubbly water, lemon slice and ice
Cucumber & Mint
– two cucumbers: peel + chop + blend
– drain juice
– in a saucepan: 1 part sugar + 1 part water + bunch of mint
– simmer 5 min. remove mint. cool. add cucumber juice to make syrup.
– mix syrup (approx a shot glass, or to taste) with a cup of bubbly water, lemon slice and ice (garnish with mint)
Strawberry & Basil
– in a saucepan: 1 part sugar + 1 part water + bunch of basil
– simmer 5 mins and then cool
– blend 100 grams strawberries with some fresh basil
– mix liquid with strawberries to make syrup
– mix syrup (approx a shot glass, or to taste) with a cup of bubbly water, lemon slice and ice (garnish with basic and strawberry slice)
Of course we made a Facebook event to attract customers and posted vigorously about our preparations and product offerings. At one point, an attendee commented “I get the point, I’m COMING to your Lemonade Stand!”. YAY!
We were as excited as two kids on the first day of school, and the day of reckoning was drawing nearer.
Carli and I spent hours hand painting directional lemon signage and making Pantone perfect bunting to decorate our tent. We had everything planned to a T…except the weather. Be warned future lemonade stand entrepreneurs! If there is anything that will foil your plans on a successful business model it will be BAD WEATHER.
On the day of the big event it was windy and rainy and not at all conducive to selling lemonade. A follow up project to this one could be writing the guide “How to Sell Lemonade in Inclement Weather” with the following chapter outline:
1. Don’t
2. Weather to Attendance Ratios
3. Upping Sales with Alcohol Add-Ons
4. Wind Resistant Tent Solutions
5. Frostbite Avoidance & Ice Cube Handling
6. What to do when Drunk People Request Freebies, and When Denied, Pee in the Bushes Nearby
7. If You Survive
But, our main goal was to have fun, which we accomplished in spades. We surprised customers with our unorthodox lemonade flavors, we visited with the local Jehovah Witnesses who took shelter from the rain under our stand, and we had enough leftovers to give private lemonade tastings to friends, family and co-workers.
Next up: Restaurant Day Fall 2013 (if I can convince Carli to repeat the madness…)
The goal of this personal project, with a self imposed deadline of completing it in a single day, was to create an alphabet where each letter had a 3D property without too many repeating elements. With a little lunchtime feedback from Jip Jip (no, I cannot make the N look like a CAT…not even a POINTY cat), the finish line was reached with fairly good results.
For the past 6 months I have been working on a very exciting project for a group of entrepreneurs who want to change the art and music economy. Frequently, only a few artists “make it” only to have a large part of their profits go to a label or agent. How to make a system that is more balanced? Enter the team at Bandwaggon.
Bandwaggon aims to make the process more fair by connecting fans directly with artists and letting fans helps artists succeed by sharing and promoting their work. In exchange, fans get a share of the profits – but only to a certain point; the artists always takes home the bulk of the profits. A direct artist-to-fan relationship, where they work together without the top 1% fleecing the socks off of everyone…sounds nice.
The essence of the Bandwaggon logo was found fairly early in a flag icon that leads everyone towards this new entertainment economy. Many rounds followed exploring the flag shape, how it was carried, and who was the bearer and a balance between being professional and non-slick. Ultimately the flag was brought in-line with the characters (below) as a banner with legs – no extra figure was needed to communicate that you should come along.
A series of characters were developed in the initial stages of the website to add personality and show that artists from all walks were included under the Bandwaggon flag. These characters were finalized far before the logo, which helped inspire the final logo.
A guitar rocking with its tongue out, an over communicative film strip, a clown using itself for entertainment, a book combating writer’s block, and a typewriter tripping on letters are just a few of the colorful cast of Bandwaggon. These characters are used throughout the site and other materials to emphasize that the magic comes from the artists and their wonderfully varying personalities.
Additional icons were created to accompany text explaining in detail the process of how Bandwaggon works, as well as to draw attention to specific areas users should take action (megaphone).
The website for Bandwaggon was a very fluid process compared to the “step 1-2-3 and it’s done” process. Since the development team was building in steps and the messaging was constantly evolving, the design also had to morph in response to new priorities and technology requests. Below is a range of excerpts from the site designs that were created along the way.
Please note all site images are mock-ups with fake content. Website is in beta testing so still in progress.
Bandwaggon is in beta-testing, so visit their and login if you’d like to help out in the early stages of their site.
Food is one of my favorite subjects: to look at, to eat, to talk about, to draw. Notice that I do not mention ‘to make’. My entire life there have been people around me who were better at making food than I am. Why not let the cooking experts make the food, and the eating experts consume it? Seems like a logical plan. However, it does result in an achilles heal when left alone. My survival strategy therefore consists of A) making a giant portion of fajitas/dahl/spaghetti that provides sustenance for most of a week, or B) ordering something out that equates to days of leftovers – a very tall order.
My uncle once asked what my sister and I wanted for dinner on a particular evening. “Stuffed turkey!” I exclaimed as my sister simultaneously cried “Calimari!” Not daunted in the least, my uncle made both, along with a 3-course following for each. My aunt contributed with a marzipan cake. At the end of the meal, a liter of ice cream was placed before me and I was told “if you don’t eat it, it will melt”. There didn’t seem to be a choice. Sometimes, things are just bound to go wrong.
Well Vegan is a brand the Bureau created in 2012 and continues to work with today, including this most recent piece. Well Vegan makes it easier and cheaper to consistently follow a healthy, plant-based diet. In the past we had made postcards for Salad In A Jar and Building the Perfect Breakfast Bowl. With summer coming up, it seemed like a perfect time for a follow-up postcard as a reminder of just how good smoothies can be (for you) – so we’d like to introduce the Mix & Match Smoothie diagram! Visit the Well Vegan blog for some smoothie recipes as well as time-saving and on-the-go tips, or check out this handy line-up of green smoothie recipes.
You can also get tasty updates from Well Vegan, including a summer full of smoothie recipes, via Twitter or Facebook or Instagram.