Oh and also, here are some links to two totally awesome food trucks we found today, The Grillenium Falcon and Guactruck!

The Grillenium Falcon:

http://eater.com/archives/2011/05/24/the-grillenium-falcon-a-star-warsthemed-grilled-cheese-food-truck-in-arkansas.php
Guactruck:

http://www.guactruck.com/

http://design-milk.com/guactruck-mobile-eatery/

As I mentioned last week, I am so excited to be designing my (imaginary) sandwich truck, and couldn’t be more thrilled that my colleague, Michelle Booth, has decided to team up with me to design the mobile app. Michelle has already been my unofficial creative advisor on this project since the beginning of this quarter and I already am over-the-moon appreciative of her keen eye for detail. (She argues with me about this regularly. And I tell her to shut up. This is becoming our routine.)

We have made quite a bit of progress in the past week. On the weekend, we got together and compiled and analyzed the data collected from our sandwich survey (thank every single one of you for participating! It made a big difference to the research process). Michelle designs and paints roller derby helmets on her very few off-hours, so we sat in her basement workshop and she painted glitter onto helmets while we figured out the nitty gritty of the menu. Then we jammed out a bunch of heavy braining on how the app ordering process would work, incorporating ideas on how the back end would respond and process orders. Then, we took a beer break, during which we decided upon having two windows: an order window and a pick-up window, and one cash register situated somewhere between them. We came up with a plan for how employees would prepare food and even where food stations would be located inside the limited space of the truck. If I have time, I am thinking about drawing up a floor plan of the truck as part of the truck design part. I feel like we covered a lot of ground. We even discussed what the sticker would look like that would label each order. Some visuals of that process are included in the slides below.

I am happy to have a team member who is as excited about these little details as I am. We had a couple of heated debates over meat and cheese pairings. It got intense!

Ever since last year, I had been looking for an excuse to get some more practice doing food photography. I really love it! I mean, it’s stressful because I’m always afraid I’m going to screw something up and waste food, and something weird always happens, but that’s sort of part of the fun. The funny part about this is, I remember when my packaging design teacher last year told me that I should take my own photos of pancakes for my River Hog Flapjacks box, I was so stressed about it. Doing my own photos seemed ridiculously difficult. And photos of food??? What did I know about that? I was totally expecting to screw it up, but the results actually turned out well and I really enjoyed it. So anyway, here we are almost a year later and I finally got to do it again! So, I am super proud to admit that the photos below of the BLT and the tomato basil soup were done by me (the iced tea shot, however, was not done by me. I found that one on the internet. But I felt like it matched the look and feel of what I have been trying to accomplish, so I included it). I am planning a second photo shoot this weekend and am very much looking forward to it.

The coming week will be all about further development of the app and the menu. We have task flows and wireframes for the app, and will keep working to flesh those out, and as always, lots of user testing. The hard copy menu will be finalized and styled this week as well. Here are some slides showing this week’s progress:

Big news for Annie’s Sammies today!! Michelle Booth has been officially added to the Annie’s staff, as we have decided to team up on the app design portion of this rebrand, which I am stoked about.

Logo is almost ready… just working on some illustrative elements. Based on my research, I decided to take a typographic approach. I feel like the logo still needs work, but will develop over the course of the project. Here are some sketches:

As for the menu, I have never designed a menu before, so it was a fun challenge for me.  I have the dimensions and most of the basic elements figured out and sketched. The menu will be 4.25 X 11 double-sided, so printing will be at a standard size. (The app will feature an abridged version of the print menu with breakfast & lunch “combos”).

Here’s an earlier sketch:

And a more refined sketch of the menu plan (this sort of reminded me of doing a wireframe for a menu!):

The P.O.S. system will be run from a tablet which will fit into a wooden stand that will be manufactured by Tinkering Monkey. Photos below.

Payment options:

– Square Wallet App – 2.75% of all purchases – in-app payment is encouraged, but the following options are also available:
– Cash (all prices are after tax, so all round numbers. No change.)
– Credit & Debit

Tinkering Monkey P.O.S.

Square Wallet App
– dongle attached to an IOS or Android tablet
– App will alert workers when the customer is near and when they should start preparing their food.

Product photography will commence this weekend.

That’s all for now! I am super stoked about this assignment!