My Meeting With Hunter Lansche

If you haven’t read my past blog post, What Is Capstone? I really recommend doing so. Some of the things I say in this post may be a little muddy, so I recommend referring back to that one if you would like more insight into what my senior Capstone project, JOL, will be like.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Hunter Lansche to discuss how my project is going and what I can do moving forward to make this piece really stick out in my portfolio. Hunter is a Saint Louis Based Creative Director and Video Production Specialist at Dovetail Creative.

I met with Hunter because as much as this is something we do not normally get to do in the other classes I have taken in my college career. I was extremely grateful to get someone with as much experience as him to look over my work. On top of that, he is a Maryville Alumni, so he knows this sort of process and had some tips to give me!

Within our 30 minute session i was able to learn more about Hunter nad Dovetail. He’s had the pleasure of working on identity projects for brands like Drury Hotels, Fontbonne University, and The Gateway Arch Website. Upon looking into all the subtle details that make these projects stand out, I was very excited to get some useful feed back.

Key takeaways from my meeting with Hunter

• Letting the restaurant function guide the design: As I was describing my restaurant to hunter i described it as a fast casual dining experience. He loved the ideas but he suggested that Ithink through te ordering process of a fast casual restaurant and how that might affect some design decisions within my menu design and my mobile ordering system. If it’s going to be a cafe style of thing, it would make sense to reflect those kind of decisions within the app and menu. This was great feed back and has already been reflected in the flow of the app and the icons of the menu.
• Overuse and building more assets: Hunter was a big fan of my Logo and my pattern I was developing for JOL and thought it made a lot of sense for how I was describing the brand to him. He suggested that I find some way to incorporate that pattern into other things or even create a secondary/ tertiary pattern or design to make a more cohesive and well rounded system.
• Inside the restaurant: One of the things we talked about the most was how the restaurant was going to look on the inside. He obviously didn't suggest that I completely change to an interior design project, but he did say that thinking about furniture,decor, posters, and the people will help mold other design decision I might be facing. He said that at some point he would love to see some kind of wall graphic or large scale design on a wall to tie everything together. I love this idea and it will be one of my next point of attack for JOL.

I felt like this was an extremely helpful process and Ithink it went over very well. If Iwere to redor the first meeting, I would probably have all of my inprogress work pulled up on a separate window. I was originally just planning on showing him My Menu and my identity system, but i ended up booting up XD and showing the wireframes and early screens fo the ordering system. All good, I’ll be better prepared for next time! I’m really looking forward to our next meeting where i’ll have much more to show and the system will start to speak for its self.