Savor Spice
Role
Researcher, social media content creator, product designer
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Figma
Time Line
September - December 2020
Differentiating the Brand
The main factor which differentiates Savor from other manufacturers is the company's goal to educate people on past and current racial issues in America and to promote African American history through cooking.
The QR codes on product labels accomplish this goal by displaying recipe ideas and instructions on our webpage, along with the spice’s history, stories relating to the dish, and other pairable products.
Large spice companies fail to recognize the culture’s history, in contrast, our purpose is to support the BLM movement and Black community through educating our consumers and by donating a portion of profits to Black charities and organizations like Black Lives Matter.
Design Process
When designing the packaging for Savor, the team and I wanted the product to have a welcoming and down-to-earth style because the product is targeted at young people with little to no experience with cooking. Thus, we wanted to make sure to design packaging that was not intimidating through warm colours and spunky shapes which cerated the welcoming sense we wanted the product to have.
With one of the goals of the company being to maintain sustainable and environmentally friendly practices, a lot of thought went into what kind of packaging the spice blends be carried in, whether it be in a bag of some kind of jar. I introduced the glass jar packaging because it was both environmentally friendly, allowing consumers to reuse the jar, as well as pleasing to the eye.
Design Challenge
A design challenge Savor faced was the logo design. As a company that is pulling inspiration from African American cuisine, we did not want to create a logo that was in any way stereotypical of the culture.
This was important to us because not only did we not want to offend anyone but we wanted to show our consumers that we did our part in taking time in doing extensive research and actively educating the team on African American cuisine and the culture for the purpose of truly creating something that has a purpose and that is genuine.
We designed a logo that used a curvy font that had a youthful look to it which helped target our younger audience. With the simple design of the sun behind the name of the company, it exerted the friendly and bright appeal we wanted the product to have. Overall, we ultimately decided not to design a logo with any evident representation of the African American culture because we believed it would not come off genuine because it may seem as though we were capitalizing off of others' culture. Thus, we focused on what our younger audience would be most attracted to and how we could design a logo that had a welcoming appeal to it.
Managing Social Media Content
Being tasked to run Savor's Instagram account, I needed to be mindful of the language used, photos being posted, and the message I was sending to our audience in each post.
Through interactive stories, vibrant photos, and short yet effective captions, it was the perfect approach to grabbing the younger audience Savor was targeting.
Creating Mobile Mockups
As the team finished up with the final wireframes of what the website for Savor would look like, I transported the designs onto iPhone Mockup templates on Figma that can demonstrate the flow and functionality of the website.
Challenges and Resolutions
Finding Credible Sources
As one of the lead researchers for Savor, a major concern of mine was finding credible sources that correctly recapped and gave information on the history of where and how African American cuisine became what it is today. It was also difficult to find authentic recipes that have no been completely Americanized by Western culture. When researching the origins and history of African American food in America, there is a good chance that history could be skewed to favor white people. A few of the articles covering the era of slavery and the civil war address the fact that white people wrote history and never cared to tell the story of black people correctly. Today, many historians and researchers are digging up information from this time period to ensure the facts are corrected. Many of the articles we have found seem to be among these but there is still a margin of error that could be encountered. It was vital for Savor to collect the correct information and the history of African American cuisine because we were creating a whole line of spice blends inspired by this culture.
To solve this major concern, the team and I decided to find connections to people who would be knowledgeable or be connected to the African American community. Denise Harrison, one of the few people we were lucky to connect with, is a professor at Kent State University who teaches English and is very involved in the Pan-African studies department. Her expertise includes intersectionality, crossroads of race, class and gender, first-wave feminist and suffragist, black women writers, food sourcing, food and sustainability, food activism, history of cooking Africans and African- Americans, Native American traditions, Native American culture, and environmental issues. Not only was Denis an African American who had an incredible amount of knowledge on the history of African American cuisine, but she also was willing to take time out of her schedule to share her ideas and help answers any questions or concerns the team and I had. Having that connection with Denis, I became confident in the information I was gathering because I was able to run my research by someone so knowledgeable on the topic.
No Personal Knowledge or Experience
No one on the team was Black and/or American. At the start, it was difficult to be fully confident in what we were created because we were nervous of being politically incorrect in any form and having any racial biases that we may subconsciously hold that could be transferred to the production of the product. We knew very little of the Black community and lacked knowledge of the African American culture and cuisine. With this matter being a huge concern of ours, it was important to us as a team to find effective and appropriate measures of tackling this obstacle.
In the first month of creating Savor, we took on this challenge by not being afraid of asking questions. The team and I sat down and wrote out all our biases, assumptions, and stereotypes we held or knew of. It was incredibly important for us to be honest with ourselves to be able to create a product that could successfully be supported and enjoyed by the African American community. It was a difficult activity because it is truly eye-opening, and it helped us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
By building this list of biases, assumptions, and stereotypes, we were able to create interview questions that we could ask African Americans and really get their side which allowed us to truly understand their perspective. We talked to Denis Harrisons, a university professor at Kent State University, and one of her students, Nakiyah, who was also African American. We asked them questions such as: what is the culture of cooking really like in the African American community? Would this particular method be offensive due to these reasons? Why is this particular thing a stereotype? Etc. We asked them every question we could think of so we could leave the interview with more knowledge about the African American community and confidence in what we were creating.
Ethical Challenges
One potentially ethical issue is that our spice app could come off to some as a way of using Black culture solely for profit. This could happen if we are unable to communicate our intent to educate people or if users of the product misinterpret the purpose behind its creation. One way to avoid this would be to not start generating revenue right away to show that we have other motives other than profit. A second way would be to have a percentage of our revenue donated to an important movement in the Black community, or supporting Black-owned food businesses.
