Packaging Design Scavenger Hunt

I, Alexandra Rosas, and Brittany Wise have teamed up for this scavenger hunt. This will be the post that has our items located within it.

 

This is our example for Best End Cap Display.

We decided on this end cap as the best end cap we'd seen because of both the visuals in use, and the referencing in both the original packaging and in the usage of the products. As something based off of Ariel, the mermaid, they used a red-headed model to tie it back to the original inspiration and to show the tested make-up and they also continued reference to the original inspirational material in both the packaging of the product and on the actual products.

This is our example for the Best Male Package Design.

We chose this one primarily based upon the very apparent male gender stereotyping within the packaging itself and because it wasn't flat in design with the same dark colors and smokey effects used in all the other designs. It used both interesting materials such as the industrial can, and an interesting design like the male form itself to draw the customer to it.

We decided on this product packaging for the Not Much Material Used category, as the only packaging on the actual plush doll was a small 2.5" tag with the brand logo, some small amount of product information and the price itself.

We decided on this product set as our example for product packaging that is Green/Sustainable.

According to the really nice sales associate at The Body Shop, the boxes for this gift set are made of 100% recycled materials, and the purchase of each of these sets has a portion donated to charity to educate children in third world countries. Additionally, the containers within the packaging themselves are also made of 30% recycled materials.

We decided on this as our example for Best Use of Typography. 

The name of the perfume is called "Boyfriend" and and imprinted lightly along the packaging of the box is a variety of male names with a small sheen to them when held in the light a certain way. It was thought to be clever because of the subtle use of male names all over the package in reference to the name of the product. The strong font choice also was clever with the subtle imprinting of the male names, like it's almost a secret as to how many boyfriends the product user has.

We decided on this example for Needing a Re-Design BADLY.

We agreed that the overall use of typography and imagery simply did not fit the name of the product, or the smell of the actual product. It looks as if it were something haphazardly thrown together instead of thought about seriously. 

We decided on this packaging design as our Unique Shape design.

While other products also fit into this category, we found this one interesting because of the actual way in which you open the product. Ramune is sealed at the top with a plastic cap and a glass ball. You use the additionally plastic cap on the top to actually pop the ball into the drink's container to get to the liquid. And when you drink it and flip it upside down, the glass ball falls to the bottom sealing the opening again (with varying degrees of success) in efforts to prevent spilling.

We picked our example for Best Female Packaging based upon many of the sample principles that we picked our Best Male Packaging. The very obvious reference the female body in the curves of the package body, and the reference to feminine sweet and sultry colors were two reasons it was chosen. There is also the reference to expensive precious metals like gold, which gender stereotypes associate with femininity and the use of delicate flowers.

We decided on this as our example for Best Use of Photography or Illustration.

The illustration effectively illustrates the name of the product and the idea of cherries being in the air. Something sweet, slightly tart and playful flowing about. The stokes are purposeful and fun, just like the body posing of the girl on the package and her dress.

  

The above is our example of a Packaging Series.

It is the most obvious examples of a packaging series as it directly references the brand in each of the products, and keeps their distinctions simple to color and numerological changes instead of trying to maintain a series using varying images placed in a similar fashion like some of the other examples about the store. The drawback of this series is that because it is so simple, it's not exactly the most visually appealing. Simplicity had its draw backs.

Postmodern Website - SLUTWalk; Screens

Ok, so for my Event for my Postmodern website, I did SLUTWalk (which I talked about in an earlier journal entry). My idea behind this was to create a site that captured the idea of the foundations behind SLUTWalk without directly explaining them. In doing that I made two pages.

The index is the "Victims" page. And on it is a representation of how ignorant people see victims of Rape or Sexual abuse. They call them "Sluts", claiming they did something to make this happen to them. To ignorant people, they all look the same, stripping them of their humanity in the process. What their race is doesn't matter to them and has no bearing, because all females who are apparently sexually assaulted in any degree did something to bring it on to themselves and any male who was sexually assaulted is some sort of weak, coward because they let that happen to themselves.

But in reality, race does matter and plays a role in Rape and Rape Culture. Despite best efforts, the racial community you come from also dictates how you're treated in regards to being sexually assaulted. Some treat victims and survivors worse than others.

Below, in small, hard-to-read text, is what the person truly is. The true identity of the person society ridicules and says disgusting things about. They belittle their self-worth and strip them of their dignity, making them feel small and voiceless.

And beneath the constructed figures are the issues they have to deal with as they walk along the road of life during the aftermath of their assault and beyond that. The issues we don't talk about are lighter in color, while the ones we talk about ad nauseum are darker. The larger the text, the larger the problem is.

The second, linked page, is a page representing what Rape Culture is. It's the background noise of many men and women's lives telling them that the things that happened to them are their fault. That they deserved it. That is should have been up to them to make sure they weren't assaulted, when the reality of the situation is that it isn't their fault. It's the fault of their assailant. It's the fault of the assailants parents, and the fault of society. Because in the end, they failed you and produced someone hideous who hurt you.

So, yeah. That's the explanation for this.

Motion Graphic - UPDATE; Music

The music I want to use for my Motion Graphic. I have the soundtrack and the beginning of the score has an additional musical element that's kind of thunderous and foreboding. And then goes into something pretty.

It's called "Merry-Go-Round of Life":

HW - Find Type Game & Digital Type Resource

So for homework I was fashioned with the task of finding 1 Type Game, and 1 Digital Typography Resource.

For my game, I located an App on the iTunes store called Fontify. It doesn't exactly teach you anything, but you get to use letters to draw pictures and I thought it was cool. There's 18 different fonts to choose from, and it's for free, which is also awesome. It's basically a time killer.

My Digital Type Resource is a little on the simple side, but I'm hoping it suffices. I wasn't exactly sure what type (HAHAHAHAHA) or resource we were supposed to be looking for, so I guessed that it was an "anything goes" sort of scenario. I found a link to 25 Awesome Typography Tutorials, which primarily focuses on techniques for typography and lettering in a digital capacity as a stand alone art form.

Motion Graphic - Update; Font Ideas

Looked up an article for some of the best free-to-use font websites out there that weren't DaFont or FontSquirrel as I know of them both. Came back with this link here, so hopefully I can find a nice selection on each to work with and play with.

So far I've only gone through DaFont for some fonts that may go along with my ideation for this motion graphic project. Here's what I've got:

 The first 3 (Revolution, Headline and Telegrafico) are options the "announcement" portion of the motion graphic. I wanted it to mimic some sort of serious headline or movie debut type thing.

The next 2 (Cleanvertising and Santana) are fonts that would probably work with my personal typeface. They're san-serifs and clean. I'd have to see them next to my actual font, because one may work better over the other.

And the last (Hiruko) is something that just speaks to me as a person. It looks like it could work with my typeface and reminds me of Hello Kitty, which I'm all about. If I really like it, I might tweak the feel of the motion graphic just to use it. Who knows.

I'll look on a few of the other websites to see if there are other typefaces that spark my fancy later on and add them on the blog by the end of the week.

Post-Modernist Site - SLUT Walk; Research, Ideation, Images

So we have to create a post-modernist website for some sort of event (sporting, awareness raising, etc.). It has to be two pages, a home page and a linked secondary page. I decided to do mine on SLUT Walk. A protest movement that started in Toronto, Canada in 2011 after a Toronto police officer said that to prevent rape that women should "avoid dressing like sluts".

Basically the idea behind the walk and subsequent movement is the fact that what women/men/transpeople/genderqueers wear are not invitations to be raped and have absolutely no bearing on whether or not they are raped. That the term "slut" is a misogynistic invention intending on discrediting women based upon their appearance and give credence to the idea that someone is "asking for it" by their dress.

The walks generally consist of women/men/transpeople/genderqueers dressed in provocative dress, with things like "SLUT" or "No Means No" written on their exposed skin, holding signs that say things like "Not asking for it!" or "My little black dress doesn't mean yes!". There are also rape survivors who take part, many known for wearing the clothes (or clothes similar to what they we wearing) when their raped occurred with signs saying things like "This is what I wore when I was raped. Was I asking for it?"

SLUT Walk doesn't have a definitive site as it's new and every changing, but they have various FB pages for the different walks around the US and world. Here are some pictures from various SLUT Walks:

Motion Graphic - Idea

So, I finally pinned something down for my motion graphic do at the end of the semester for the class. I'm going to create a motion graphic invitational/announcement to my graduation for next year. Yes, it's a year early but I can always edit it to include more up-to-date content as I draw closer to what I consider my ultimate goal and most important developmental milestone: Graduation.

I'm thinking of a relatively theatrical type of motion graphic, one that expresses my personality to the fullest. I kind of want a movie-announcer type feel to the intro, to show how big of a thing this is for me. And then have it delve into examples of my work over the years and the progress I made as a person with some really pretty instrumental music. I am super big on instrumental music.

I have a lot of instrumental music in my library, so maybe I can find an editing program and edit it to a length I want to use. I don't think this is going to be something that is maybe longer than a minute or two.

I need to get nice pictures or screens of all of my work over the years I've been in school. And maybe some progression pictures of myself to go along with it. and now I need to find fonts and storyboard what I want it to say.

Simplified Henna - Update

Screaming. So incredibly happy that I have gotten this dang typeface to work now.

So it seemed that the problems I had been facing previously were a combination of too many points, stray vetor lines throughout my characters, incomplete vector punch-outs, and small areas in my outlines that were not connected and I had not noticed.

Looking back, this all makes me feel really dumb that I've been having all these problems and didn't seem to notice half of them as I went along, but when you stare at a computer screen for many hours throughout the day, especially on the same pieces, you tend to have these instances happen.

Thankfully, having fresh eyes on the project helped me to see what I didn't, and encouraged me to look harder to find some of the problems myself.

Anatomy & Simplified Henna Typeface - Update

So I'm sincerely bummed, because over the last week I realized I was not going to be able to do my Anatomy typeface as the one I concentrated on for class. It is... entirely too detailed. I got very overzealous with the idea of a really analytic, illustrative type like this and instead of making something doable, I made something that is not able to be accomplished with the amount of time being given. Were the rest of the class dedicated to doing just this, then I would definitely have the time necessary to bring this really kick-ass idea for type to life, but I realistically couldn't do it. Not with the typeface needing to be presented to Nancy today.

So, in a bit of a mad-dash I pulled out my Simplified Henna sketched and began vectoring all of those for today. I'm kind of sleep deprived, but sometimes that's the type of thing you need to do in order to meet deadlines or whatever. I'm excited to see what they look like in this program we're using to make out typeface.

Anyway, here are some images of the vectored characters:

I'm not entirely fond of (woah, should have probably cropped that last image, my bad) how the numbers came out, but that's ok. I can just not... utilize them. Fix them later. Whatever floats my boat, you know? But yeah. I think the lowercase and uppercase letters even themselves out well. So I can't wait to see them in action and hopefully all goes well?

Found Lettering In Lancaster

So, as part of our homework the one week we had to go through Lancaster and the surrounding areas to find examples of hand-lettering. I forget exactly how many we needed at the moment, but I have a nice handful of them.

Rebecca told me they needed to be displayed here on our blog, along with the locations of where we found them at.

Found this outside of our classroom.

While it was probably a hasty job with stencils, it still looks nice to me with all the bleeding bits, so I went with it.

Hand drawn lettering for a sign outside of Rachel's Creperie on Queen Street in downtown Lancaster. I like the personality in the lettering, I also like the idea of spicy nutella hot cocoa.

Also found on Queen Street (in fact I think almost all of these were). It was carved lettering in wood for the woodworkers guild, I believe. None of the lettering is done by machine, it's all hand carved. It was really neat to see all of the different surfacing within the actual wood.

Also on Queen Street. The signage that graces the barricades of where Zap & Co. once sat before the fire sometime last year or the year before it. I like the bubble lettering being offset by the thin ampersand.

More Queen Street. This is right outside The Candy Factory. As you can tell, I was walking down the length of Queen Street taking all of these. Lancaster's best lettering is practically in a 5 by 5 block radius.

This was not found on the streets of Lancaster. This is on a wine bottle in my home. I find that wine and other liquor/liqueur bottles tend to have the most interesting typography and most beautiful labeling for commercial products.

Also not found on the streets of Lancaster. Another wine bottle (which I hope to crack open soon). You can't see the intricacies of the lettering very well from this photo, and I should have gotten a close up of it, but I liked the typewriter feel of the lettering, as well as the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" typeface sort of thing going on.

Simplified Henna Typeface - Sketches

These are the sketches for my Simpified Henna typeface, minus the numbers 0 - 9 (I'm still working on what those should look like).

Keeping the idea of simplicity and henna in mind, I tried to create forms that weren't entirely too elaborate but were still decorative and would look nice on their own. Sticking to certain parameters, I made sure to use only a limited type of design decorations to encompass the actual typeface. So above you see closed "leaves", small opened "leaves" and large open "leaves" with seems. You also see dots, which are stepped in size from large to small, and a specific "flower" shape used.

Making sure that the elements between the uppercase and lowercase were distinguishable from one another, I may sure the uppercase was the more elaborate of the characters, and the lowercase were to be the most simplistic ones. There are very few decorate leafs or curls on the lowercase and none of them utilize the dots, that was strictly meant for the uppercase characters (and numbering) only.

I also tried my best to make even the number of characters that started with open shapes at the top versus closed shapes at the top for the uppercase, but decided that being lax with those restrictions on the lowercase would better benefit their development since they're already so simplified in comparison to their uppercase counterparts.

Anatomy Typface - Sketches

I couple of examples from the sketched version of my typeface. Or is it hand lettering? I think it's a typeface since we're vectoring it and putting it in that program. I have no clue anymore, my head is everywhere.

Anyway. I used another typeface as a base for my current one so I could match up the different organs to the letters to see what worked with what. It's an odd way of doing it, but it gets it done. Otherwise I'd be sitting there assigning body-parts particular letters that may not fully work.

After going over my options, I've concluded that I probably won't have enough individual body-parts or organs to do the entire alphabet (that or they just don't match the letter form in any way, shape or form), so I'll be substituting any of those odd letter forms that don't match up with bones and ligaments. I almost decided to go with things like fingers and arms and whatnot, but I want what is literally under the skin or counts as a whole as an organ (IE the penis, since it is a sexual organ, but it sits outside the body unlike the vagina).

I also got an idea of what to do with it as you can see. I was inspired by this lettering here:

Found on tumblr here.

I really liked that hand-drawn aspect to it and heaviness on the one side and it seems to be working with the lettering overall that I've done. It also gives it this old-school medical feel to it when there were no pictures, so doctors hand drew or had someone hand draw out diagrams of body parts and whatnot.

Going off that I decided that my idea for motion graphic with my typeface in it was going to be something LA Noire inspired. So think like the 1920's gangster or crime films, with their grainy sepia-toned surfaces and the really hyped up sequences. Much like the whole "Black Dalia" thing. Crooked cops, slashed ladies, that sort of feel.

I haven't completely pegged down the overall concept, but my guess is a story explaining the death of something. Whether it's serious (like talking about heart disease) or not serious (a really dramatic motion graphic about ED), it's gonna have this really overdramatized presentation. I should look for some grainy film reel movies awhile so I can use them throughout the motion graphic.

Typefaces - Chosen w/ inspirations

WARNING: Some images in this post are graphic and may be considered disturbing or upsetting to those viewing them. If you're not good with blood, or exposed human entrails than please do not click on the links following.

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My first decided typeface is the one dealing with human anatomy, and not just regular "this is an arm, this is a leg, look a nose!"  human anatomy either. I'm utilizing all major organs, and entrails in order to create this typeface and I'm hoping to bring forth a level of detail that is more sophisticated than cartoon-y like my first examples were following:

I'm going to give them more dimension and depth if I can. I kind of want to go sort of macabre with this. Hopefully that is allowable?

Inspirations: Human Heart, Human Intestinal Tract (Large & Small), Human Lungs, Human Brain, Digestive System (Stomach / Pancreas), Human Liver,