Kathryn Hockey OCA Learning Log: Exercise: Packaging

Research

I actually got told off for taking photos in the first supermarket I chose for research...luckily the others weren’t as picky.

I also looked online:

Trend Hunter website for packaging ideas

Sunpack

Lovely Package

Anouk Perriault

Extinct animals

I had a look at this site and didn’t think that any of the extinct creatures would appeal to children as much as dinosaurs, except perhaps the dodo.

Natural History Museum top 5 dinosaurs

I immediately decided against including the Coelophysis as it didn’t appeal to me as much visually.

I chose one dinosaur for each flavour and did some thumbnail sketches

Sketchbook

I wanted my dinosaurs to be funny, friendly and cartoony so as to appeal to children.

Colour-wise I chose purple for the raisins, orange for the ginger and brown for the chocolate chip, deciding to colour the dinosaurs, one for each flavour, then tending towards their complimentary colours for the background packaging to hopefully make them stand out in a zingy way.

At first I imagined that I would use flat digital colours, in fitting with the cartoon drawing style, adding texture by drawing it in. Then I did some experiments with marbling, improvising with oil paints diluted by white spirit and mixed in a water bath.

One of my results reminded me of reptilian skin

so I opened it in photoshop and adjusted the colour balance to change it from blue to purple.

I then took one of my thumbnail sketches, cut out the shape, copied it to a layer mask over the purple, applied the mask and cut and pasted the result to a new document and then layered over the cut out line work

This worked pretty well so I put him on a yellow background, textured with a tissue paper layer,

then copied the dinosaur shape, pasted it to a layer mask and then lightened his belly and chest with a 246 point brush in white with soft edges.

I also made a strip with multiple images which could be used elsewhere on the packet.

Deciding on the shape of the package

Initially I thought of making the image to fit a tube, but looking at various tube shaped packaging I realised that only half the area is devoted to the image, the rest being reserved for information and this didn’t fit with my idea of including two dinosaurs in the image; one in the foreground observing the other at play with the biscuits in the background, so I opted for a rectangular shape.

I then used my thumbnail sketches to work on a layout with the text for each flavour

Choice of fonts

I decided to include the name of the dinosaur on the package, making a play on words with the flavour name. I chose Prestige Elite Std, an old fashioned typeface style font for the name of the dinosaur, such as you’d find labeling an exhibit in an old museum and Curlz MT, a fun, informal font for the name of the flavour. I curved this text to make it more lively.

I planned to replace the O in organic with a drawn biscuit image eventually so I chose the perfectly circular O of Century Gothic followed by distorted segoe script for the rest of the word. I’m not sure this works yet, so I’ll return to it later.

Line visuals

I printed the thumbnail layouts and traced them in pencil, making a few adjustments to the position and posture of the dinosaurs, then scanned them to photoshop multiplying the layers to make the lines more bold.

Colour line visuals

I coloured the T-Rex version with the colour adjusted marbling in photoshop as detailed above.

I opted to replace the traced Prestige Elite Std text with computer generated text as it looked too uneven, but decided to keep the 'organic' and flavour title hand drawn.

I found the result a bit disappointing at this stage; I think this is because

the background dinosaur is too big
the dinosaur shapes lack depth, they need shading
the biscuits need more work
the background colour is not quite right

This is a version with the background dinosaur made smaller, he now fits into the space better but the ‘Organic’ and the biscuit he is stretching for are in the wrong place

I added purple shading to the dinos, changed the background colour, moved the ‘Organic’ and altered the biscuits (they still need detail)

I used different pieces from my marbling experiments to colour the other dinosaurs, first changing the colours in photoshop to match the flavours

Chocolate chip

Ginger

I saw a programme about Wallpaper recently where they discussed the 'deepening' effect of adding layers of subtly coloured patterns between the foreground and the background so I thought I’d try it here

I used a photo of ferns (since ferns are prehistoric) that I found on the internet, I’m not sure if that breaches copyright since the original image is unrecognisable. I asked my tutor for advice, she said “I don't think it does, it's all abit of a grey area to be honest. If you credit the source you can be sure that you're not trying to hide anything.”

I chose a bright green background colour for all the boxes because it is eye catching, it sets off all the flavour colours well and unifies the set.

Although the Triceratops also work well with blue

The T Rex is my favourite so I developed it to the mock up stage, here are the sides and front

Mock up

On reflection

The colour LV’s are probably a bit over developed for this stage, considering the likelihood of changes being required in a real life situation but I wanted to experiment with layer masks in photoshop so it was worth the extra time.

The marbling worked really well as textures for the dinosaurs and biscuits.

Overall I’m pleased with the results, I think they are eye catching and would appeal to adults and children.

However, the little stegosaurus and triceratops are a bit stiff looking, next time I’d make them more fluid like the t rex.

A few days later I made some biscuits to take to a friend’s party, they didn’t have raisins in them and they weren’t organic so I changed the text slightly (the colour coding doesn’t match, but never mind) and made an actual 3D mock up with a different box.