Packaging evidence 1

Shrink Wrap Design

These are the first set of graphics I have made for my shrink wrap design. I made them using various shapes and the pathfinder tool. I’ve made three different sets of eyebrows, so that every few heads have different features.

In my design, the heads are placed in rows, for each row I’ve reversed the order of the heads so that it doesn't look like the same head placed one on top of each other. I started with three different heads but didn't like that the middle head was always the same design, so I added another one thinking that this would sort the problem. I’ve now realised that the middle or one of the middle heads would always have to be stacked on top of itself, but I’m happy with the change anyway as I think four heads make it less obvious and it also looks more interesting.

Before

After

Rather than make the graphics for my bottle out of a vector image, Chris suggested making the image into a repeating pattern that could be added to the swatches. (I’m not planning on using these colours in my final design! The design of the head is now much more simple, but I think I prefer it like this.) This was then added to the symbols palette which meant it could be applied to a 3D version of the bottle. As you can see, the image works quite well around the body of the bottle but the neck is extremely distorted, leading me to rethink my design. I do like this idea, so I could perhaps use it to cover the inside of the packaging or maybe print it on to tissue paper and wrap the bottle up in this design. As you will see from my sketches, my design also features a sort of ribbon that wraps around the product and holds its name, maybe I could really simplify the wrap and make the packaging the most interesting part of the product. This ribbon aspect could also be included in the packaging, perhaps by untying a ribbon the sides of the box could fall open, revealing the product.

• After decided the design didn’t work when wrapped around the entire bottle, I had a play around with the terracotta army heads to see how they could be incorporated into a label. I tried making them cover the entire thing but the design seemed to bold to allow for any text to stand out, so I thought I could try making a few rows of them that would fade up into the background. Here, I think they fade too quickly, but this can be altered. I quite like the effect, but am now considering using this on a shrink wrap as I think an all white bottle could look quite modern and elegant, and the fading allows them to only wrapped around only the body of the bottle so the distortion around the neck wouldn’t be an issue. Here I have added some text to see what it could look like as a final design, I used a colour red from this picture on the right I found on the internet. Chris has told me the colour used on the Chinese seals, like the one in the bottom corner of the image is called Cinnabar which is red mercury sulphide. I’d really like to capture this colour on my design.

• Here I’m playing around with the design a little more. Rather than white, I looked to see what the design might look like in an off white colour, like in the image I found. I quite like this but think its a little too green, so I’m having a look at different colours and comparing them until I find the right one – that's what the little brownish coloured square is for next to the label! Because the text is quite spaced out, I’ve looked at adjusting the spacing of the heads a little more to see what effect this might have. I think I prefer them more spaced out, it seems to help the whole design looks less cramped. I’ve also used multiply, to help them fade into the background more.

I’ve been looking at different colours I could use for the background, I want it to be a light colour, almost like an off white, but they’re are obviously hundreds of variations. The first colour here seemed too grey, the second too green and I felt that the third and fourth were too brown and reminded me too much of a skin colour. It’s hard to judge colours when they’re placed next to lots of others but I have decided to go with the fifth colour, as its not too much of one shade – its quite neutral.

• Here I’ve added a drop shadow to chinese text to help it stand out, I liked the subtlety of the white font, but it wasn’t legible enough, and I think this drop shadow really helps to just lift it a little bit. Next I want to adjust the fading in the heads, because I think they fade to harshly here, the jump between the shades of grey needs to be less obvious.

• I’ve adjusted the fading so that the shades reduce by only a percentage of two, I also added another line because I felt that by the third line, they still hadn’t faded enough into the background. Here the fourth line is only just visible and I think when you compare this to the slide before, the fade is much more elegant. I now need to have a look at fonts I could use. On my initial idea on paper, it was designed to be quite a decorative style but now that the design is much more simple, I’m not sure how this would work. Looking back over how I’ve progress I’m also still debating on whether I like the white background better. (The heads would obviously have to be made darker again if I was to choose white.) I think I need to apply the design to the 3D bottle to see how they compare. ?

• Here I tried seeing what the head looked like closer together again, but I think I prefer them spaced out.

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• Here I am testing out different fonts to use for the products name. Out of all the ones I tested, I think I liked this first one here best. Because its quite heavy, I think it balances the whole design the best, I think some of the others are too thin and are overpowered by the other graphics. The font is called Bebas Neue and is in 18pt.

Fonts from www.fontsquirrel.com

• Here is my finished shrink wrap design on a 3D bottle made in illustrator.

• Here is my design on a shrink wrap label.

Label Design

• For my label design, I experimented with graphics from all three of my ideas. Here, I’ve started by creating a leaf (I made this using a mixture of the arc tool, the ellipse tool and the scissor tool), as I planned to create the design where a leaf was made up of tea leaves. But as I hadn’t got any real tea leaves yet, I decided to use the time seeing what they would look like in a circle, like in the first of my final ideas. I decided that I liked the way this looked and would experiment with it further. When making the design, I used a circle to make sure I positioned them correctly, but I liked the way the leaves looked like they were wrapped around it and decided I could make a design to fit inside this.

• I have experimented with colours I could use for the leaves, I tried first using red and blank, two colours often associated with China, but I decided I liked more natural colours better, and so used these two different shades of green. I then tried adding a background, and I like the way this grey colour looks, although I’m not sure yet whether I want the label to be rectangular, or to just be the shape of the circle.

• I then incorporated my third label idea into the design, I think the designs all actually work quite well together, probably because they all include similar elements anyway so thankfully, they don’t look too busy, or like there's too many ideas going on at once. I need to add the name of the product to this now, which I think will go in the space above the mountains. I think this works well as it is, (I made this with a mixture of shapes and the mesh tool) but other than the tea leaves, it doesn’t really suggest anything Chinese, this landscape could be anywhere really, so I’m going to add a few more elements like those in my idea.

• The graphics I have designed for this are actually inspired by the Chinese story of the origin of tea, where the emporer Shennong liked his water to be boiled before he drank it so that it would be clean. One day, on a trip to a distant region, he and his army stopped to rest. A servant began boiling water for him to drink, and a dead leaf from the wild tea bush fell into the water. It turned a brownish color, but it was unnoticed and presented to the emperor anyway. The emperor drank it and found it very refreshing, and cha (tea) came into being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea_in_China

I wanted to add sugar cane to the image toGive clues about the ingredients used in Kombucha. To get the shape, I drew two ovals and a rectangle and used the pathfinder tool to make this shape. I then coloured the shape using the gradient tool and stacked them on top of each other to make sugar cane. I tried putting two on either side of the mountains, but I thought it looked better less symmetrical, and more natural, like this. I also like how it sort of frames the background. The font I have used for the name is one I have downloaded from the website Fontsquirrel, and is called Matchbook. I like the long ascenders as they remind me of Chinese writing, but its still simple and modern.

• Here, I am making the pot full of boiling water, again, I made the shapes out of various shapes, the arc tool and the pathfinder or scissor tool. When making the shape of the flame, I had some trouble trying to use the mesh tool on it, so I used a tip I found on the internet, where you create a rectangle and apply the mesh tool to it, then reshape it into the shape you want. This meant I could then colour the flame to make it look more realistic. I then used the spiral tool, to add some detail to the flames that looks similar to pictures found in Chinese culture (the best example of this is probably in Chinese illustrations of clouds; I had thought of using clouds in my design, but I think this would make it too busy, and I like how the sky is quite simple, letting the product name be the main focus. )

• I experimented with these shapes until I was happy with the final piece; at first the flames were quite large in comparison to the pot, but I thought they looked better much smaller. I also adjusted the colours used in the mesh tool on the pot to make it look more 3D.

http://images-mediawiki-sites.thefullwiki.org/10/3/6/2/78289943568554491.jpg

I wanted to add an image of a Chinese man to my design, but wasn’t really sure how to go about this. I decided to look for illustrations on the internet and found this one I liked. I then used the same technique I used when making the flame, by making mesh boxes and using them to create the shapes I want that can then be coloured in. I made parts of his robe, hair, and face from these boxes and then added detail using the line tool.

Once I added the chinese man to my design, the lines looked too heavy, and made him look sort of less 3D, so I lowered the weight of them to 0.5px. I then experimented with where he should be placed, in the end I decided he looked best slightly in front of the pot. I still didn’t really feel happy with the way the fire looked, so I tried changing its transparency to hard light and I like this much better, I think because you can see the pot through it, it looks more real.

• This is my final design for my label, it shows the back and front labels. The measurements used for the labels were taken off a 300ml Budweiser bottle, the back is 5cmx7cm and the front is 9cmx7cm.

• I changed my final design slightly in that I made all writing on the back of the bottle green because at such a small size, the pink didn’t stand out as well when I put it onto the image of a bottle.