Prototype, prototype, prototype.

Fifteen prototypes and countless trips to Michael's later, the design is finally coming together. I've decided to go with a flip lid so that it's impossible to lose and can be opened with one hand, and I've beefed up the lid area so it's a few layers of cardboard thick. Now all that's left to do is finalize the design for print and make decisions on what materials to use. 

Revolution

There has been a lot of coffee consumed in the past week. My caffeine-fueled thoughts eventually condensed into a solid idea, and I'm well on my way to the end of this project. I've created three different package sizes to allow for visibility when stacked in front of each other, and each of the sizes will denote a different size of spice contained (fine, medium, and coarse). I've built a mock up in Illustrator true to size and printed a few copies to allow for some freestyle sketching later tonight. I feel like my package design is almost done - now all that's left is designing the graphics and constructing the model.

McCormick Spices

We've started another packaging redesign project. This time the focus is on a food, beverage, or cosmetic product. Since my last project focused on cosmetics and everyone I've spoken to is doing beverages, I decided to look at redesigning a package that truly inconveniences my life on a daily basis: bags of spices - particularly the McCormick spices that dominate the spice aisle in almost every grocery store. The packages are made entirely of plastic and feature a nifty Ziploc that allows you to keep your spices fresh (which they spent years developing particularly to never close and to toss gratuitous amounts of spices into your cooking when you are trying to pour in a pinch). Their look is very consistent but nothing special, and the design doesn't reflect the heritage that McCormick brand spices have. 

If McCormick spices was a person, they would be described as: traveller, explorer, generous, charismatic, worldly, trying to be the greater good, forgiving, earthy, free, connected, easy going, driven. 

Keeping this in mind, I plan on creating a tall, triangular package that sits nicely in a cupboard and lays nicely in a drawer. There will be different heights of packages so that when they sit in front of each other on a shelf, you can still see the spices in the back - or if they were laying in a drawer, the spices contained would still be just as visible.  In order to achieve this I'm going to use clean, large, and colourful typography. I'm going to create an ornate compass graphic that is reminiscent of the current graphic on the original packaging and treat it like a wood etching, hopefully in white ink against the heavy brown card stock I'm using for the package itself.

This is the end!

WHEW! Well, that was quite the rollercoaster experience. Gluey fingers, satisfaction, anger, frustration, revelation, defeat, photos, success. It's amazing how good designs look when they're photographed. I've kind of got a thing for printing out designs lately and taking pictures of them for submissions, and I think it's really beneficial. Things just look great photographed, and it gives it such a sense of realism. What I'm getting at is that I was feeling defeated by the end of this project, but seeing my final designs photographed against a nice white background in a light box made everything better. Check it out: 

Pretty cool, isn't it? I'm pretty satisfied with the final result. Although I didn't manage to actually print directly on the tins, I think that the same effect was achieved using printed transparency sheets. The only plastic used is for the window and for a base for the lashes to sit on, which is much better than the previous package (100% plastic). All the instructional information is on a little circular accordion booklet inside the tin, leaving the outer label simple and clutter-free. Now, when you buy eyelashes and want to reuse them, you have somewhere to store them. Heading to a friend's place to get ready? Perfect, you can throw the tin in your purse. Even once the lashes are long gone, you can still use the tins for endless storage opportunities. The value of the product has greatly increased and the entire thing is much more attractive.

So what now? Over the next few days I'll edit shots and make everything look as perfect as possible, then create a poster showing the before and after packages side by side. And then, before we know it, we'll be elbows deep in our next project!

One step closer.

Today we got some great critiques from fourth year design students. I worked on nailing down some of the details of my designs and had some wonderful inspiration from the students.  I need to start cutting out stencils for airbrushing the tins and figure out how to attach magnets to the insides of the tins to make them stack. I also need to start taking my label and info booklet designs into the computer and begin experimenting with printing.

All of the instructions will be printed on a little accordion booklet that will sit in the tin underneath of the lashes. I'm going for bold graphics and simple, pictorial instructions.