When clients come to visit us they are always amazed to see the inner workings of award design and manufacture. To us that work at Gaudio, it’s easy to forget that what we do can be a mystery to the client – they give us a brief, receive the designs and ultimately the finished award – everything in-between is unknown. Using the recently produced Coca Cola Icon Awards as an example we can look at the journey from brief to delivery.
The Brief
The most important thing for our trophy designers is the brief. The brief is created between the client and one of our Project Managers and includes the budget, delivery date, logos, branding, event details, likes and dislikes and any other requirements. Coca Cola had been buying the sculpted bronze trophy from us for many years for this event, but they had decided they would like something new.
The brief was as follows:
"We have new branding for the Icon Awards this year which we’d like to base the design on. The branding is much more modern and colourful, so we’d like the award to reflect this. We’d like to incorporate the stars into a metal or acrylic award. Please include the same winners’ details as previous years. Logos and supporting branding attached."
Initial Designs
Our designers immediately set about creating some ideas. We have a process that ensures that clients always receive a range of designs, of a high quality, that are appropriate to the event, brief and budget regardless of which designer produces the work. Within this framework our designers are free to create the ideas and designs in any way that suits their style. Sometimes our designers like to sketch out concepts first, other times they jump straight to 3D CAD files. It has even been known for our designers to try out ideas in modelling clay!
Our designers immediately set about creating some ideas. We have a process that ensures that clients always receive a range of designs, of a high quality, that are appropriate to the event, brief and budget regardless of which designer produces the work. Within this framework our designers are free to create the ideas and designs in any way that suits their style. Sometimes our designers like to sketch out concepts first, other times they jump straight to 3D CAD files. It has even been known for our designers to try out ideas in modelling clay!
Our designers particularly liked working on this project: “The Coca Cola branding is so recognisable and iconic – it’s really exciting to work with. The old design was beautiful and abstract, but the client was understandably looking for something more modern. We produced a range of ideas, but we were particularly excited about incorporating red anodised aluminium – it would give the client the iconic Coke red in a premium and modern material.”
All the designs here are produced in SolidWorks – our 3D CAD package. This allows us to create photo-realistic visuals to show the client exactly how their award will look.
A well-defined brief means that we are more likely to get the designs right first time, but this is not always the case. Client feedback is important at this stage as it allows us to hone the design or change direction completely. We are quite happy to produce more designs until we get it right. Coca Cola were immediately drawn to a design – the red anodised Coke bottle. They proposed a few tweaks to the use of the logos/branding and asked for a few angles so that they could better understand how the awards would look. We were happy to oblige.
Progressing the Order
Once the client is completely happy with the design it’s time to place the order. Our design team are experts in their field – product designers by trade. They do not only produce stunning visuals, but they design a product. Every concept that a client receives has been thought through to manufacture by our design and production teams. The designer will produce the technical drawings and proofs for the client before handing the project over to our production team to manufacture. Even after the design stage is over our designers will often be found in production watching their ideas come to life:
“One of the great things about having design and manufacture under one roof is being able to see your designs take shape as a real-life product – it really connects you to your craft. It also helps the design process as we have constant feedback between the teams to improve design, quality and manufacture.”
Contact us today to see what our trophy designers can create for you.
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