Day two of the competition was rough. I stressed over the Cap’n Crunch redesign challenge all night and ended up getting less than an hour of sleep total. (Note: This was the first week that I had EVER pulled an all-nighter. I think they are pointless and detrimental to creativity and productivity, but I learned that sometimes, under intense pressure, going without sleep is the only option. The week of Command X, I got 10 hours of sleep. No joke. And I hate when people complain about their lack of sleep, but seriously, 10 hours.)
So, how on earth was I going to make Cap’n Crunch appealing to adults? When our 8 AM interview with Sean Adams rolled around, I still had no idea what I was going to do. I think I did a pretty good job faking it for the camera though!
By 10 AM, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to pull off a super polished redesign, so I decided to illustrate the box. I quickly wrote up a few lines of copy to sell the cereal and went to town with my Sharpie.
I went through about a dozen versions before I was ready to scan it in and manipulate the hand-lettered font along with photographs of brown sugar and milk. I was inspired to bring Cap’n Crunch back to its basics and position it as a delicious treat that adults could feel good about eating. The “crunchy” Whole Foods feel, as Bonnie Siegler put it, made the product more approachable and easier to connect to for today’s health conscious adults.
Well, Chip Kidd hated it. “Oh, how far you’ve fallen” he said. “I just don’t get it.” To which I promptly and politely responded,
“Constructive criticism, perhaps?”
The auditorium exploded with applause. This one witty remark back at Kidd garnered a huge response from the conference attendees. Even Neenah paper featured my comment on their blog. But I wasn’t so sure that my words were going to save me from being “deleted.”
Backstage, I couldn’t have been more nervous. Unable to focus on the presentations happening 10 feet away, I jumped on Twitter to see what people were saying. That’s when I saw this.
Debbie Millman loved my redesign! She was extremely supportive throughout this whole process, but I’ll leave that for another post (my admiration for this design icon deserves its own blog). And she wasn’t the only one who loved it. There were a handful of people commenting on my hand illustrated package. Wow. Maybe, if the judges had a live Twitter feed in the deliberation room, they would be influenced by my fans!
They were influenced by something, and for some crazy reason, decided to allow me to advance to the next challenge. If I looked surprised and unhappy on camera, its likely because I was. I was kinda looking forward to going to the Design Observer party and then getting a decent nights sleep. But with the announcement of the final challenge, I was wide awake and ready to get to work…
Below are some additional photos of the second presentation.
