Cereal Packaging - Printing, Making and Photographing

This was the final session on our cereal packaging and the focus of the workshop was printing out our cereal box net and then photographing the box. My work that I brought to the session was ready to be printed, I just had to remove some red outline boxes I had used as guides. Below is the artwork file that was printed. 

To do this we had to save our Illustrator work as a High Quality Print PDF and then place it on an InDesign file in a layout set up for us. We then waited for our work to be printed out on card.

Once our nets were printed out we were instructed to cut out our work and score the edges of the box that would need to be bent, and then stick the right edge together to form the box shape. This bit was a bit tricky for me as the box would not stay stuck together even with glue and double-sided tape, but managed to hold together long enough for me to photograph.

Here is the finished box photographed:

Overall I am really pleased with the way the cereal box turned out and think the design and colours both work well and I think my work has translated well from screen to printed object.

Cereal Packaging - Designing

In this session we took the sketches we had done previously of different possible designs for the front of our cereal box, including our character, cereal name and bowl of cereal. 

Firstly when we had scanned in our sketch we cropped it and altered the levels so that we had a good quality scan to work with. In Photoshop we then duplicated the layer with the scan on, and set the top layer from 'normal' to 'multiply' so that the sketch lines looked more defined and darkened. We then saved this file as a jpeg.

After this we opened up Illustrator and set up an A4 landscape document. We then used rulers to create a rectangle that would be the correct size for our scanned sketch of the front of the cereal box to fit in, the width being 70 mm and the height being 105 mm. We then placed our scan in the document over the rectangle. 

Once we had done this we then created a new layer for the net to go on. We placed the net file on the document and sized it to fit the rectangle, subsequently deleting the rectangle layer as it was no longer needed. We then drew the outline for the net. From this point we had to use the pen tool to draw round our scan art and then think about designing the rest of the cereal box.

At first I decided to use to first design that I had sketched out as I thought the necessary requirements for the box (character, name of cereal, bowl) were all laid out quite well, but as I began to trace over the scan art on Illustrator using the pen tool I found that the design didn't look as I thought it would and also the felt the colour palette I had chosen wasn't working. Here is the design that I first started to create:

Then after having a few weeks between the second and third session I decided to start again with creating my cereal box, changing first the sketch design for one with a better layout. I also decided not to draw round the letters using the pen tool but use a heavy, block font so that it would stand out and be easy to read. On the second design I also chose to use an image of a real bowl of cereal and not one drawn on Illustrator as I felt this made the design look more authentic, also to work with my chosen cereal name of 'Oaty Owls' I Photoshopped an image of some porridge in to the bowl and spoon image I had found. As well as this I decided on a new colour scheme featuring brighter, bolder colours and keeping to a few colours. 

 I chose this design variation to work with in Illustrator instead as I liked the owl character perched on the spoon. I went through the same process for creating my second cereal box design attempt like using the net template as I did for the first design. 

I made a few changes to the sketched design in Illustrator such as changing the cereal name to Oaty Owls and removing the tree branches, but kept the overall layout of the different components the same. 

I am much happier with the way this design turned out and think it works much better overall with improvements to the colours and also using fonts that were not drawn by the pen tool, as well as the owl character being much better drawn this second time round I feel.

Character Development

The focus of this process and production session was character development. The session introduced us to production techniques and workflows as they relate to character design. The character we created will be used on cereal packaging which we will also design and eventually produce prototypes for. The focus was on character design as it relates to brand & pack design.

In the first instance we created rough pencil sketches of a variety of character designs keeping in mind the dynamic qualities that make characters appealing and interesting, so considering different stances and positions/ facial expression for the characters. Here are mine: 

Once we had done this we had to pick which character design we wanted to develop on with to feature on our cereal box. I chose the owl character as I felt it looked the most interesting and dynamic which would work well on a cereal for children, and also fit with the current trend of owls and woodland creatures featuring on all sorts of products. 

we then sketched out layout ideas for the front of the cereal box which had to feature our character, a bowl of cereal and the name of the cereal. Firstly I just quickly thought of a few names for a cereal and came up with some owl- themed ones to relate to the character.

Here are my design variations:

I think the ones that work best are the ones where the bowl is coming in from the side, I tried the bowl in the centre but a risk is dead space either side of the bowl which would not make for a good packaging design aesthetically. 

Overall I am quite pleased with the designs I created and enjoyed thinking about the layout of the different elements on the packaging and am looking forward to developing my packaging further.