Packaging Net Testing

So I really needed to sort out my nets for my packaging idea, the lid was pretty simple, the only problem I needed to solve was how I was going to fill the corner that has been 'cut off' here are some photos showing progress of the lid:

As you can see I progressively got to a decent point for the lid, and I think it works really well.

Next was the base which turned out to be more of a challenge, seen as I only have a base and 2 walls there was a problem of stability and whether or not the 2 walls would be really flimsy.

I came up with 2 solutions to make the base and test how well the walls stood, here are some photos to show how I tackled the problem.

 Aobe is the first solution which consists of folding the paper underneath and gluing it in place, this looks tacky and would take away the flat surface.

 Then the second solution involved creating an oblong that would hide the paper underneath, I think it adds to the solidarity of the overall package as well as you can see below.

I prefer the second one, although I will have to take into account the design that gets printed on the base as I want the package to look good with the lid on and off.

Further Logo Development

So after the feedback I recieved below I did some further work on the logos people chose and my personal favourite. Adding rounded corners, adjusting line weights and putting them into containers gave me a whole new set of logos.

Here are the new set of logos:

Number 1 and 2 are a variation of number 7 from the last post whch people seemed to like, I definitely think the rounded corners help the logo seem friendlier and easier on the eye (yes, Aaron Draplin is a boss), although i'm not a fan of the negative space which helps define the letter R.

Number 5 and 6 are also a variation of number 7 but I think i've executed the design way better, the R looks a lot nice and the rounded corners are very appealing to me, I prefer number 5 though, the offset of the R adds an interesting composition inside the logo.

Number 3 and 4 are a variation of number 8 from the last post, I think the tracking of the 'letters' fits together better, not so much blank space.

Number 7 and 8 are also a variation of number 8 from the last post, I think the circular container and the thin line weight give it a really nice professional look.

Number 9 I didn't alter from the first version, this was my favourite as the motion in the letters really reflected the way I draw, I think it's the most 'fun' logo.

Overall I am torn between 5, 8 and 9, some reflect me as a designer more than others but don't look as aesthetically pleasing, as James pointed out in the feedback from Facebook, the R could look like a P in number 8, I tried fixing this but I felt it took away from the logo, I think the majority of people saw an R first though.

After some general feedback from people on Facebook it seems number 2 is the favourite, but as someone pointed out number 3 is more artistic, which I agree with, I think it fits better with what I want to do as a designer, which is illustration, but number 2 can be altered in more ways to fit for example the series I might do in future, I could change the black to a pattern or painting and it would still work as a logo, which may not be possible with number 3.

Logo Development

Here are the logos I took forward from paper sketches and planning, overall I think I have a good selection of different styles, some of which reflect me more than others but I will provide a brief description of each. All the logos are black and white because I believe a good logo should work in it's most basic form without colour, which can always be added later.

• Number 1 and 2 are an abstract self portrait of the contours of my face, not the nicest looking chap I know haha, but I like the bold lines and thick bounding box, it reminds me a lot of Shepherd Fairey's Andre The Giant image.
•  
• Number 3 and 4 are a form of my initials I use on some of my illustrations already, I really liked the shape so I vectorized it and it turned out pretty well, the tapering lines provide character to it, I think it reflects me a lot.
•  
• Number 5 is a basic drop shadow using the Futura font, I think it's clever the way we can look at this and see how it forms an A and R, making the audience feel sort of clever.
•  
• Number 6 is a lowercase freehanded signature, it's not my favourite, it's too loose and doesn't work well in my opinion.
•  
• Number 7 combines the overall shapes of A and R in a way I think works, it's by far the simplest logo in the collection, which could work in it's favour.
•  
• Number 8 and 9 play with the idea you don't need all the lines in a letter to make them out, I did 2 versions with different line weights, I prefer the lighter version, it might look better in a container (such as a box).
•  
• Number 10 combines the lines of each letter together to create a whole, I think it works well but the point at the top of the A is really sharp and distracting.

I will ask my peers to vote on which one they think is best and suites me as a designer.

Primary Research Survey

I created a survey using Survey Monkey to gather some primary research, to find out people's opinions about myself, packaging in today's world, colour preferences and why, what makes a good logo and how I could improve my survey (improve my surveying skills for next time).

Here are the questions I asked:

1. What 3 words would you use to describe me as a person?

2. If possible write a short description about me as a person, or a designer.

3. If you walked into a room and there was a random box on the floor, what colour would make it appealing and why?

4. What are the 3 most important things about packaging in today's world to you?

5. What has been your favourite design trend of the past year? Provide examples if possible.

6. List 3 things that make an aesthetically appealing logo to you.

7. If you have any suggestions for future surveys, please list them here.

I gathered a lot of useful information from this survey that will influence my design to make it more appealing, the fact it was anonymous led people to be more honest than usual which is always good. It was definitely worth the time to make it.

Here are just a few answers from the survey I thought were interesting:

Curated By

Just on the train back from the Curated By event, couldn't stay for Erik Kessels which was a shame but the other talks were great.

It started off with Morag and it was nice to see her bold typographic work especially in my hometown, a big piece of advice I got from her and the other two speakers was to try and make the future, don't replicate the past (what's the point) and balance work between making a living and making your career enjoyable, you will always have work you have to do to get by.

I enjoyed Jack Schulze's presentation the most (they were all very insightful) but I am very much a tech guy and to see Jack's innovations turned out very inspiring.

Johnny Kelly's talk was weird in some places but thought provoking, although I felt it wasn't as strong presentation wise and it would have been nice to see more of his work process.

Glad I braved the snow to make the talk and will definitely try to make the most of the advice/knowledge I've received.

Home Paper Engineering

Finally got round to doing some paper work at home to try and understand the limits of paper/card and how I could use them to my advantage, It was good to see what interesting shadows were created and how light bounced around within the folds, this has probably been the most stressful workshop so far! Folding paper wasn't as easy as I expected, but some of my end results look good to me.

Packaging Inspiration

Having a hard time thinking of a 3d package design that reflects me as a designer, went to the interwebs for help, I think making the package interactive is great, lets the audience have fun with it and makes you rememberable. 

Audience

So to find out who I want to target audience-wise with my self promotional package, I went straight to Google, I've never thought about this before and found it really exciting to see the companies out there who could represent future me in making a career out of what I enjoy doing most. I wanted to look for agencies who already represent artists whose work I fit in with, it just wouldn't make sense to be represented by an agency who isn't known for the type of work I will create.

Article for future reference: http://www.computerarts.co.uk/features/finding-agent 

First to hit the list is Central Illustration, which was founded by Brian Grimwood in 1983 and has a great collection of artists, including the dust collective which is good to hear.

Secondly we have Eye Candy who are based in both the UK and New York, which is great in case I fancy moving during my lifetime, aside from that their range of artists I feel is limited somewhat and in my opinion they seem to favour a very specific type of illustrator, nothing really like the work I want to do.

Leading on I found a very exciting looking agency that goes by the name Folio Art, having looked through their artists and finding some really colourful and vibrant work this looks like a really good agency to be under, especially after seeing artists like Gez Fry who has worked for clients like Industrial Light and Magic, a really big company owned by Lucasfilm, making films like Cloud Atlas and the Star Trek movie.

The last agency I looked at is the Lemonade Illustration Agency, these have a really diverse artist selection which gives me confidence, looking at their client list just added to that, overall it seems like a great place to be represented by.

If I had to choose from the four great places I've looked at i'd have to go with the Folio agency, the artists they already have and the clients they seem to have worked with are great, their website alone stands out to me as a professional agency, easy to use and nice to look at, if I'm going to be under an agency I want to be represented by someone who makes it easy for clients to find my work, otherwise they'll just leave and go to another agency.

Reflection

Throughout the past year I have really tried to pinpoint what type of designer I want to be, during the first semester I really enjoyed the Observation and Communication module, trying to capture the essence of a building and your experience in one drawing was a challenge that was happily accepted.

Although we used a lot of traditional media in the first few modules I really want to focus my packaging around a working method I personally enjoy, it may be frowned upon but digital painting and illustration is a really enjoyable medium that I have dabbled in over the past year or two.

Some of the first few artists I stumbled upon were Anthony Jones (who's book I recently bought, titled Heaven's Hell) and Feng Zhu, they are primarily concept artists but have done Illustrations for a few big clients such as George Lucas, James Cameron and Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Feng Zhu 

Anthony Jones

A tendency I've noticed among arists i've found is that they do both concept art and illustration, and I can see why, the two subjects really coincide with each other and it doesn't take much work for a concept artist to do illustration or vice versa as long as the fundamental skills are there.

Some other really amazing artists I looked into were Derek Stenning and Theo Prins who use digital painting to create stunning visuals that are used to help create films and games, but also to help market the product whether it be a re-released version of a book, a poster or packaging for toys and other merchandise that all lead back to the original product (movie, game).

Derek Stenning

Theo Prins

Creative Folds

So before I start sketching ideas for how I want my packaging to look I thought i'd research Richard Sweeney who was mentioned in Glyn's paper folding workshop, looking at his work I got a general idea of how I could approach my packaging designs.

Below are a few examples of work that I liked.

What I really enjoy about these works of paper are the sharp folds and the way they direct your eye to a point constantly, I think the sharp folds really give the paper a sense of importance, they are also aesthetically appealing and add depth to the paper so it isn't as plain, I will definitely incorporate some of these factors into my packaging.

Aaron Draplin - A Design Inspiration

So i've known about this guy for a while now, one of my favourite brand designers and he has an awesome talk about how he got to where he is today, he found some recognition from this video below which outlines bad graphic design in America, this was the video I first saw of him and it inspired me to look further into him, I present to you, Aaron Draplin.

So his website for you to check out is Draplin.com, it contains all of his corporate identity work for clients such as Nike Air Max, Coal and many more. His work really stands out to me because of how simple it is, yet it's impact is massive, if you look at his massive portfolio it just works, it's pleasing to see and isn't too intrusive like a lot of identities that are out there today.

His work is vector based (as all brands should be), bold and rich colours which link with whatever the product they are branding is, his Cobra Dogs brand for instance is red and yellow which obviously link to the colours of ketchup and mustard, I believe this is to reinforce the product behind the brand, you want people's memory to always think of the product when they see your logo. 

Subtle things like rounding off the sharp corners and giving the logo an overall shape so it's not messy help and are nice to look at.

 I aim to incorporate some of his design personality into my brand/identity because of the reasons above, I will end this post with the hour long talk that I highly recommend watching, search for his other videos too as they are highly inspirational and great fun.

Workshop 01 - Folding Paper

Well to get started on this project we had a workshop showing the interesting forms we could make and how they could portray a product or brand, in this case ourselves.

We started off with simple folds and worked our way up to changing aspects of a complicated net to suit a specific theme that was given to us by Glyn.

This picture is the result I obtained when we were given different brands and had to make something from them, I chose the 'o' from the Halfords logo, giving it a curved fold on each side emphasized it's accelerating shape which I thought fit well with the brand.

 This is the net I modified, I sort of broke it as it wouldn't fit together due to the curved folds, but I was going for an elegant shape like a chest or gift box for jewelry.

I learnt quite a lot from this, the exercise really helped me understand how much goes into packaging design.