We wanted to throw a different kind of baby shower to celebrate the arrival of Art Director Efrat’s baby girl. A live design battle between three teams—the Baby Battle Royale—judged by Efrat and her husband, Eli.
Team Onesies: Sun “the Hacker” Interactive Creative Director and Amanda “Manic” Account Manager
Team Twosies: Greg “Meticulou”s Senior Art Director and Jennifer “Unamused” Marketing Manager
Team Threesies: Gregg “Tiny Giant” Creative Director and Ali “Sweet Talker” New Business Director
— Let the design battle begin! —
Challenge 1: Naming and Visual Identity
Pitch a baby name with a logo and color palette.
- Sun: The first round was the most challenging one for me. That start determined everything else, and I didn’t quite get to what I wanted to do which ended up having an adverse effect on the subsequent rounds.
- Gregg: The first 5 minutes I was so rusty that I felt like I was just remembering how to use Indesign. The time crunch wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it might me. You just trust your gut and go.
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Challenge 2: Design A Label
Taste your mystery baby food, determine the flavor (carrots, Thanksgiving Dinner, or lentils and rice) and design a food label around their concepts in round 1.
- Jennifer: Developing the concept was fun, but I’ll pass on taste testing or smelling baby food in the future— who knew “Thanksgiving Dinner” smelled like squash?
- Gregg: The food challenge was the most difficult. We weren’t sure what was in that jar.
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Challenge: 3: Baby Food Ad
Design an ad to promote your baby food. And it has to be created in PowerPoint only.
- Amanda: Towards the end, everyone began to get a bit sillier about the challenges, the designs, and their reasoning behind the meaning of what they created.
- Ali: I personally love PowerPoint, so I took over this part of the competition—finally, a design tool I know how to use! 🙂
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Time to Vote
After the three rounds, each team presented their work to Efrat and Eli. After some intense questions from the pair, Team Twosies was declared the winner.
Team Reflections Post-event
– How did you time manage 20 minutes each round?
- Amanda: Sun and I were a pretty great team when it came to dividing up the responsibilities! We would take a minute (60 seconds to be exact) to plan, and then we would both begin. I would research as he designed. Then I would email him inspirational images, colors, etc. We had our system down to a science by challenge 3.
- Greg: Manage? I’m assuming that term is used loosely here. I would liken it to one holding down a panic attack while relying on a bag of trusted design tricks and heavy breathing to get through each task. Jenn was very helpful with the more strategic decisions—name, mood board, inspiration—and for bouncing off ideas. While she was taking care of those tasks, I was busy with tiny design explorations for the first 5–10 minutes or so, then making a final decision and executing.
– How did it feel to design competitively and live in front of people?
- Greg: Unnerving. Having to think that fast is hard enough, but going through that process on the big screen isn’t pretty.
- Ali: It was exciting, but also difficult because people were able to see our ideas before we had them fully fleshed out. However, it was really interesting hearing the commentary from our audience about our ideas while they were being designed—very competitive.
Congrats to our Art Director, Efrat!
