OUGD503 - Responsive: Collaborative - BEAR Company Research

From our action plan we decided to split the research down the middle and pick the areas we wanted to focus on. I am researching:

• Company
• Mountains
• Campfire
• River

Company

I am looking at the company and its brand as well as three of the five areas we want to feature on the box. I have already researched into the company a bit when we was doing the mindmaps, so I will start with that first.

BEAR

I looked on their website and this is their home page. I think it's really fun but not in a childish way - the font is friendly, the navigation boxes are rounded and illustrations are aplenty to keep it interesting.

The story of how BEAR was made is that the founder was reading an article on bears who were going into the city and rummaging through trash cans for food. This made them really sick and they died a lot earlier compared to the bears that ate from their habitat. This made her create a brand which offered a healthy alternative to snacks for children.

There is a page for all their staff, and a little bit of information. I found it really interesting as the facts were short and sweet, and a little bit unconventional. I think when writing our content we need to choose interesting facts to not only fit in with their theme, but appeal to kids.

There is also a page for BEAR facts.

These are all the yoyo products you can buy in the flavours. I think the layout is really simple, yet it still looks fun due to the bright colours used.

Here is the product with the big box it comes in, and I like how the iconography is used to easily show what's inside. 

When you click on the BEAR cards that you can collect, it opens another extension to the site. This shows a completely different layout, and I thought I could bear this in mind if we took it further and created an online page where parents and children could download templates.

BEAR also has friends, and I was quite surprised that they had big words, such as dinosaur's names, and makes me realise that we can push the content to be quite intellectual as kids can learn it. I think the parents who buy these products want to push their children's intellectuality because they care about feeding them healthy snacks rather than chocolate etc, and so this probably reaches across other aspects of their life.

You can also collect free stickers, and I think this simple key appeals to both kids and adults.

On the Alphabites page, it has an activity to do for 'B', which targets the crafty, rather than educational side. However, I think it is quite simple, and our craft concept is more complex and challenging. Our concept would also last longer.

This is the most interactive part of the site regarding real people and how they have used the products. I think it's worth thinking about how children can interact with the site and company within our concept, as we could hold a campaign where children sent in pictures of their sets built up.

Here are the range of products that they sell.

B&B Studio

I looked at the studio who did their branding and packaging.

There advertisement for yoyos is in a woodland setting, showing its organic and natural side, so I think we're on the right track with our woodland theme.

Here are some of the cards which have games on them.

Here is the front of Alphabites cereal, which will stay the same as we are only designing the back. this means our design needs to fit in with this. I noticed on these two, there is a little illustration on the top right corner indicating the content on the back of the box.

Here are more flavours of the yoyos.

Here is a lunch box style container for multipacks of the fruit rolls which I think is clever because kids can relate to it. I think its fun.