Cheese Society- Evaluation

Being the vice president and the graphic designer of the cheese society this year has been a great pleasure and we will be leaving the cheese society behind and two first year illustration students shall be taking it over.

As it it is the final year of myself and the president Hollie Webb running the Cheese Society we wanted to make it a good one. We planned, organised and ran five cheese society events this year as well as the fresher’s fair. Organising the events always takes longer than expected, making and creating posters and flyers, contacting bars around Leeds and actually getting the cheese and holding the events.

Our first event of the year was held at Friends of Ham a very appropriate place as it is a cheese and meat specialist restaurant. The promotion for the event included a poster design, a Facebook event and over 100 emails sent out to people who signed up to join the Cheese Society at the Fresher’s Fair. The poster consisted of a collage of cheese clouds, a cow and a mouse, something light hearted to catch the students eye.

Once the promotion had gone up for the first event we realised that people had to pay memberships again and this year we wanted to give something back to the members something they can keep and advertise the Cheese Society to others. We decided to screen-print tote-bags to give out with a membership. The membership has gone up from £2 last year to £5 this year, this is purely so we can buy more cheese for the events.

The Eat and Greet went really well, people came with their own cheese which started converstation and we also provided cheese. It was a great night with a great turn out, we sold seven tote bags which made up for the cost of the cheese.

The second event was the Christmas event held at Homage to Fromage in Leeds a pop up Cheese restaurant. Everyone was asked to come in their best Christmas jumpers to come drink and eat cheese with us a great way to start the festive period. Promotion for this event again was in the form of a collaged poster of Jesus with Cheese and wine along with a Facebook event to invite people.

The Ot-Brie run was the third event of the year, the event is an Otley Run which is a famous pub crawl of Leeds. As it was a pub crawl we had to fill in various health and safety forms. I struggled with the design for this poster for a while and came up with various ideas before creating the mouse coming out of its hole. To keep every poster consistent I kept the logo to the top left and information in Edmondsans at the top of each poster. The event was promoted arouind uni and Facebook to remind students and members of the next event. The event went really well, it was a fancy dress event, people came dressed as various cheeses which was amusing.

The Dairy Disco was the fourth event of the year, by this point we wanted the new presidents of the Cheese Society to get more involved and experience how to contact bars and promote the events. I asked if they wanted to have some design input within the poster and they really liked the idea. We had a cheese meeting and I asked them as a joke to draw a DJing cow, I really didn’t expect the results to be so good. They send It over to me and I added the logo and type. I was really happy with the results from the collaboration. The illustration students booked a bar in Leeds for the event Bilbao Bar in Granary Wahalf, myself and Hollie were happy they managed to book somewhere however weren’t too happy with the location. However, the night went as planned and the first years got a lot of their friends to come who will be the new members of the Cheese Society next year.

The final ever event that myself and Hollie will plan for the Cheese Society is the Cheese Ball. We both wanted this to be a big celebration of the year and a goodbye to the LCA Cheese Soceity and all the fun we have had creating the events. I wanted a lot of people to come to the event so I made many leaflets to put around college and posters to promote the event. I designed the leaflets as giant cheese balls and cut them into a circle shape and put them where people swipe in and out of uni to catch students eye, pick one up on the way out and for it to be a conversation starter. The event was held a Belgrave the biggest place we have ever had a cheese event. The Cheese Ball was great, a great celebration of cheese and the Belgrave was a great choice of venue for the send off. 

Designing for the cheese society has been great this year, third year has been a busy year so sometimes the events didn't get as promoted as much as we could of due to lack of time. I am sad to leave the Cheese Society as Vice President and graphic designer, its been an interesting two years running it, however I am really happy to hand over the cheese responsibilities to two passionate cheese illustration students and I wish them all the best in their cheese related adventures.