Yak Yak part 5: Grid Variations

In Part 1 you were introduced to Operation Mercy and their yarn and clothing company called Yak Yak. In Part 2 you joined us on our field trip to local yarn shops to get a feel for the marketplace. In Part 3 we narrowed the scope and showed you our design narratives and mood boards. In Part 4 we unveiled our interpretation of each of those design narratives. For part 5 we will narrow the scope with grid variations.

A shift in the product.

The fun part of being a designer, and an aspect of the job that is often a surprise to many, is how intertwined the internal operations of a company and the external brand of a company truly are. This aspect of design became apparent with the round 1 logos with Yak Yak too.

Round 1 sparked some debate within Yak Yak’s team. Here’s the issue; Yak Yak will initially launch with its yarn products. However, in the past few weeks the Yak Yak team has realized the importance of having a majority of their products be actual garments. Though a significant shift in operations, a greater emphasis on the garments would allow Yak Yak access to a larger industry bringing significantly more work to the local Pamir people. This is important.

With the shift in what they want to be when they grow up, Tenfold needs to change where we were going with round 1 and think more in terms of a fashion brand. The biggest shift being that Yak Yak garments will be geared to both men and women.

Mood Board Revisions

Yak Yak will be sharing space with brands like Kuyichi (a fair-trade company prominent in Europe), Edun, and TopShop. Brand examples to look at that appeal to both men and women are Quicksilver and O’Neill.

The biggest revelation to come out of these discussions came when Sarah had us look at brands like Fat Face and White Stuff. The target market for these companies is the same market as Yak Yak; 20-30 somethings, living a moderately active suburban life, that are financially secure enough to buy more than basic fashion, but not desiring high fashion, want to be hip, and might care about the impact of their purchases.

Feedback
Though a pretty significant shift in Yak Yak’s product and subsequent shift in audience, round 1 wasn’t radically off. The challenge is now to create a brand that will initially appeal to knitters and later translate into a fashion brand.

Here is the feedback that we received from Yak Yak on round 1:

“We argued back and forth between concept one and three… one seems great
for the guys while targeting the other for girls. After a lot of talking I think we are settling on three, but with some changes. We really like it for our yarn market but for garments we think it needs to be a bit less folky and soft.

Would it be possible to see some more options on the lettering: I like quirky direction but am worried it is a bit too ‘wild-west’ and doesn’t really say who we are: exotic silk
road, wide open high pamirs.

We think the yak is cute – we argue back and forth on if it could be more cute, developed into something more than just a plain yak, or be from a different angle and we can’t agree. It would be nice to see some variations there too.”

Grid Variations

Feedback can result in infinite variations. As a way to reign in and organize options, we like to use grid variations. In this case we are comparing two things; the mark, which will run along the x axis, and the typeface which will run across the y axis.

With the options outlined for Yak Yak the goal is simply to further narrow the scope of the project. Once the selection is made, we will proceed to the final build.