A Thanksgiving Chili Cook Off… For Canadians!
Yep, you read that right!
I got to design an ecosystem for a chili cook off for Canadian competitors! The main details of the event included:
Everyone is Canadian… or married to a Canadian at the very least
Everyone is competing for the best chili based on five categories
The cook off takes place on Turkey Day
For the event, I designed:
Scorecards
Preliminary instructions (for phone screens)
Table tent cards to place a number in front of each chili
The prize image with the “mascot”
Roles: Designer
Software: Adobe Illustrator and InDesign
Step 1. What are we even doing?
I didn’t have very much time to create this whole thing before competition day, which meant the contestants didn’t have very much time to prepare either. To provide as much prep time as possible, I quickly threw something together that was easy to share and would explain the rules, instructions, and guidelines.
In throwing this all together, I was able to come up with a really fun mascot that had elements I could reuse throughout the pieces of the project.
The Mascot
Knowing what I knew about this event, I wanted to tie in three things; a turkey (for Thanksgiving), Canada (for the Canadians), and chili.
Turns out, that weird dangly part that hangs off turkey beaks is pretty dang convenient if you want to incorporate a chili pepper somewhere on a turkey illustration. The rest is self-explanatory in putting a Canadian cold-weather hat on the turkey, and replacing those huge feathers with spatulas for the cooking part of the event.
Scoring the Chili
There was no way we were going to let our judges write their scores in boring excel sheets! No offense to the excel wizards out there. Each judge was given a professional-looking scorecard that outlined each category, explained the scoring system, and included brief guidelines.
How Do I Know Which Chili is Which?
Each chili was associated with a number. The chili had a table tent-style card in front of it. Each of these cards included elements from the turkey to keep the ecosystem consistent.
Well… How Did It Turn Out?
I don’t know! Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the event, but I got word that it was a blast, and participants were wondering if this could be a new annual tradition!
Here are some of the photos I got from the cook off!
