This past fall I took a Packaging Design class that involved designing packages for 3 products. First, a sports or recreation product, second, a beverage, and third, a snack or candy.
Below is a short description of each of my designs as well as a large gallery at the end with plenty of process work and more pictures of the the finished pieces.
Project 1: Sports/Recreation Product
Our first project was to redesign a package for an existing sports or recreation product. I chose to do a set of blue glowing poi. I chose this product because the existing packaging was essentially a purple nylon bag with no description, instructions, or product name. It simply had a URL to the company’s website. Basically, it needed some major improvements. I started by replacing the purple nylon bag with a tennis ball tube. This allowed for the product to be fully displayed to the customer. I added a flashy name name to the product, “Shooting Stars”, so the product would appeal more towards my audience, boys and girls ages 8-12.
Project 2: Beverage
I had a lot of fun with the second project we worked on, beverage packaging. We were able to choose an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink. I knew I wanted to do wine, but I had two ideas that I couldn’t decide between. The first was to do a set of large wine bottles with a film noir theme and illustrations. The second idea was to do a wine flight of small bottles varying from light to dark to educate people about different types of wine. In the end, I decided to combine the ideas into “Scarlet Revolver”, the film noir wine flight. I used images from classic noir films as the background for the different labels. These images also gradate in darkness along with the color of the wines. Each bottle has a description on the back of what the wine tastes like and what it is paired best with. Each bottle also has a small red band near the cap, each has a different archetype character from the noir genre, for example the “femme fetale”. Lastly, all six bottles fit into a revolver inspired 6-pack which can be seen in the gallery at the end of this post.
Project 3: Snack/Candy
Our third project was to create package design and point-of-purchase display for a snack or candy. In this project, we were asked to work with a different audience in mind than what we had already done. I decided to create something for really young children, ages 5-8. I wanted to create a health bar for kids, much like what a Clif bar is for adults. I figured if companies can use packaging design to make kids CRAZY about candy, why can’t it be done for health foods too?
To begin this project, I had to come up with a killer name. I wanted something that was simple, and kind friendly, something fun to say, like ‘Lego’ or ‘Osh-Gosh-Bgosh’. I was going back and forth between ‘Gu-fu-yu’ (short for ‘Good For You’) and ‘Yumbo’. I ended up going with Yumbo because it wasn’t as complicated and worked better for my audience.
Next, I had to develop the wordmark and visual system. I wanted to keep things simple and cute. so I used a lot of rounded shapes and primary colors. The little red character was also created with the idea of simplicity and cuteness.
Lastly, for the point-of-purchase display, rather than making some kind of fancy, stair-stepped revolving stand thing, I opted to go the simple route and make a plain box with an over-sized back panel.
Gallery
To see more images of the completed work and some process work for each of the projects, view the gallery below.
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