Southeastern Mills
Choose Your Own Batters & Breadings Adventure
The Brief
The Challenge
For those who work in the food processing industry and develop breadings and batters, they understand the science behind creating the perfect coating. Food coatings must not only taste good, but they also need to provide and protect flavor, texture, and appearance. Coatings may also need to prevent oxidation, limit moisture and oil transfer, give freeze/thaw stability, and extend shelf life. They have to be applied and stay attached to food surfaces under various conditions without getting stuck to each other. Breading and batter systems are usually considered in isolation, which makes it hard to understand the differences between them and why any one system is more suitable than another.
When you search for the term “Breadings and Batters” you will find many articles, studies, and books that explain the process. However, there is no visual aid to support all of this research. Since Southeastern Mills is a leader in the food coatings industry, we found this to be a great opportunity to present a graphic that displays their vast knowledge on breadings and batters. Because of this, we were challenged with the task of presenting the expertise of Southeastern Mills over an extremely large area of the food processing and production industry, batters and breadings. We needed to develop a product that could be used across multiple mediums - print, digital, social media.
Defining Success
The goal was to create a graphic that would be widely shared internally and around the food processing industry, and show how Southeastern Mills is an expert when it comes to breadings and batters. Success would entail creating an easy-to-use and understand the representation of a set of complex systems. Product demonstration is important for companies that desire to show their customers all that a product has to offer before they purchase it.
Southeastern Mills desired an animated way to demonstrate how various items can use their products. It had to be effective in both print and digital mediums to be dispersed in many channels. We envisioned it being used at trade shows, during customer engagements and as a hallmark content element on the sem-pro.com website. After reviewing this infographic, viewers would have a better understanding of breadings and batters and be compelled to share the graphic with others.
The Results
Our first task was to define the scope and scale of the information that we needed to communicate. We worked with various teams at Southeastern Mills to understand the different systems that were applicable on an industrial scale.
After our initial research, we outlined the process using a series of sketches. Once the Southeastern Mills teams reviewed and approved the sketch, we selected a few different graphic artists to design just a single step in the process. By using artists with unique personal styles, we were able to present choices that were uniquely different for the client to select from.
After the final design was completed and approved, the designer then worked with our web development team to bring the diagram to life in an interactive format. The resulting web page/blog allowed users to interact with the diagram to select single systems or to interact with various elements to learn more about each.
The Breadings and Batters chart was created in both a digital interactive version and 200 11” x 17” posters printed. The print version was sent to customers via mail and email, and the digital interactive version was made available on the Southeastern Mills website and blog.