BIG SECRET REVEAL! My Adventure with Nescafe Azera and The Prince's Trust!
Finally I can reveal the big secret! One of the new @nescafeazera tins in your local UK shop might just be my design!
That’s right, you heard me! I designed a new tin in collaboration with the Prince’s Trust and Nescafe Azera after winning a competition to design their next tin. This experience has been one in a million and I wouldn’t change a thing. Here’s my story!
Around October/November time last year (2020) I found out about a really cool sounding opportunity to enter a competition run by Nescafe Azera. I read the brief, and thought why not! I could create something that fit the description. We were asked to create something to encourage the UK after such a hard time enduring the pandemic, something that screams ‘You Can Do It!’. Positivity, encouragement and determination filled me as I doodled some potential designs.
The Twelve Agency team were also so incredibly wonderful with their design expertise and focus groups. We were put into little groups of about 5 artists who would all meet on a zoom call and present our ideas to each other. The professional designers gave us wonderful feedback, and I was super excited to get creating.
It took me approximately a month to draw up my two submissions. The first was a landscape digital drawing of several mountains, all topped with snow, with trees and clouds and a little cabin linked by a chairlift. I wanted to bring across the idea of overcoming adversity, climbing that mountain you never thought you could, and really reaching your goals. I submitted this design alongside my winning design, which I named ‘Plants’.
Plants is a messy drawing of a household overrun with plant life. I wanted to try and bring a little bit of what I had experienced during the pandemic into my art, and my experience had really been collecting house plants. My bedroom, and the shared communal areas of my house, are all filled with wonderful plants that I adore. I’ve come to call them my silent friends, because it feels like as they grow, so do I. They cheer you on from the sidelines, and provide that sweet sweet hit of seratonin and dopamine we all crave.
Suffering from mental health issues for a good chunk of my life has been difficult and I’ve managed to find little coping strategies to deal with every day life. I can’t just stay in bed all day when I’ve got a jungle of plants to look after, of course! So that’s my design, and the little back story behind it. This design was my favourite and I’m so pleased that the judges loved it as much as I did.
I never expected to get long-listed let alone shortlisted, so imagine my shock when I came onto the zoom call with the team to find out I had been chosen as one of the 5 winners! I couldn’t believe my luck!
And now here we are, nearly a year later with my tins on the shelves of your local Tesco, Asda, B and M and so many more retailers. I do hope you love my design as much as I do, and if you do see it in the wild please send me a photo! I can’t wait to see it on the shelf for the first time myself, it’s going to be an incredible experience and maybe all this will finally start to feel real.
Thanks to the wonderful work by @nescafeazera and @princestrust I am delighted to be part of a competition that saw my design, as well as four other incredible designs, worthy enough to sit on your shelves. Big thank you to my mentor Mike for believing in me, my mum and dad for being my rock, and my best friends for supporting my dreams. I could never have done it without you!
My little ratty girl, Hex, is also super pleased to have received some tins!
My tin design is called plants and the aim was to bring a little jungle from your living room to your kitchen. I've had depression for years now and plants are just a little silent friend that keeps me going. I'm sure many of you have also adopted house plants over the course of the pandemic and if they make you as happy as they make me then they're doing their jobs right.
A special shout out to my fellow competition winners, incredible designers, and amazing friends for also enjoying this amazing opportunity:
And a big thank you to @kellyhoppen for the endorsement and kind words of encouragement. I'll treasure them always.
“I'm so inspired by what you've created for NESCAFÉ AZERA showing your passion, innovation and dedication in creating something so extraordinary that is now going to be on the shelves of supermarkets nationwide. You should make you be extremely proud of yourself and know that this is just the beginning of your creative journey. Don't ever forget how special you are!” - Kelly Hoppen