Exercise: Writing a rationale

I did some research about writing a rationale as I thought it would be useful to see some examples. I found a description of a design rationale helpful on www.simplicable.com/new/rationale. The article explains how the rationale is a way to establish the objectives of the design as well as the potential challenges and constraints.

I chose the last brief where the illustration will be printed on a limited edition of shopping bags for Sainsbury’s. This is a closed brief and I thought it would be interesting to see how to deal with the various constraints and possibilities.

I used my sketchbook to explore some ideas before writing the rationale.

This is the rationale:

The illustration will be printed on a limited edition of Sainsbury’s shopping bags. The three key themes central to Sainsbury’s (“Be the best for food and health”, “Show respect for our environment”, “Source with integrity”) all evoke the idea that the customer can trust the source and the quality of the products.

This is a message that is particularly important today as consumers are more and more concerned about their choices and the impact on the environment. I therefore propose to have the planet at the centre of the illustration with a growing plant swirling around the planet and up in an S shape (for Sainsbury’s). With the plant at the centre, fresh products such as fruit and vegetable or fish jumping on a stream would spread all over the canvas area, evoking the idea of abundance coming from nature. The planet could be the opening of a horn of plenty to further illustrate the generosity of nature or be held in two hands to show that it needs to be taken care of.

The various parts of the composition would be small illustrations that would work on their own a bit like a collage so that when the bag takes different shapes because of its contents, the viewer can still appreciate the design and possibly be motivated to look at the whole illustration.

The colours will be bright and evoke nature to reinforce the message.

All these elements would convey the message that the products available in the supermarket are healthy, fresh and sourced with care both for the customer and the planet and that Sainsbury’s is the right place to shop.