#asu1

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Magical Cereal Self-Help Kit

A self-help product to guide and support young people's mental health

My Creative Project

Cereal Box Design Sketch

Cereal Mascot Inspiration & References

Graphic Designer & Illustrator : Ms LUTRA

Colour Scheme Inspiration

Colour Psychology

Cereal Box Inspiration

Toys/Prize Inspiration

Meowgical Cereal Box Quick Design

Mood Board

The Overall Design

Potential Booklet/Zine (included in the cereal box)

Storyboard

Aqua Magic (Lifestyle Task)

How illustrations and characters affect emotions

A/B Testing

My Practice

Research Process

User Survey

Personas

How Might We Questions

Zine Inspirations

Reverse Engineering of Kellogg’s COCO Pops Cereal Box (Four Viewpoints Task)

Visual Hierarchy and Information Design

Choco Bear: A Quick Cereal Box Design 

Independent Research - Modern Publication for Young People

One Book (Simplicity Task)

Twinnie Stationery x Cosmetics (Simplicity Task)

Colour & Composition Experiment

Recolour Experiment

Mascot Design (Iteration)

Zine Cover Analysis & Experiment

Zine Layout Analysis & Experiment

Cereal Box Cover Iterations

Cereal Packaging Design

Collectible Toys/Prize Conceptual Design

Self-care Zine Contents

Dinosaurs (Headline Task)

According to the user survey result, most of the young people are likely to enjoy art tutorials to distract their minds, and to help destress during their difficult times. Along with self-care articles, mainly mental health and self-esteem related contents are to be included in the zine as well.

Prioritising sustainability and practicality of cereal toys/prize, I came up with a few designs that potentially could be included in the box. Due to the limited time, I may not be able to complete the solid product design. Instead, I decided to design a set of stickers which can be used for a bullet journal helping with mental wellbeing. 

Rough Sketch

Sticker Sheet Design (Finished)

In order to design a package my own cereal box, I have decided to pick one of large sized cereal boxes currently available in the market as a reference. Quaker Kids Oatie Mix-Up Honey Cereal 400g has durable, stable package design with efficient, clear information as well as appropriate visual hierarchy. 

I unfolded the cereal package to see its overall template

My idea came from the Bangkok student protests. A recent headline indicated that the Thai monarchy and government were being compared to the ancient "Dinosaurs" by the protesters.

My response was to convince those that, dinosaurs, are more liked and inspired than that of the rulers of Thailand. Thus, implying that the people in question are even worse and dinosaurs don't deserve to be associated.

A four-panel comic was an appropriate choice to get the message across quickly. I also utilised design techniques refined during my main ASU1 project to design the characters to appear visually appealing to reinforce their likability.

source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/22/thai-teenagers-tell-rulers-youre-dinosaurs

The four-panel comic

With feedback I have received from a few people, the current problem of my cereal box design that I am facing is ‘it is too cliché’, or ‘it does not communicate well enough’ as well as ‘it seems to aim to younger children, rather than teenagers.’.

Hence, iterations in various compositions. I tried to think of 4 different cereal box designs with total different compositions based on not only cereal box covers, but also book cover designs such as magazines, and fictions for young adults. 

The top left: the cereal box cover focuses more on the product photography, which includes the zine cover. I personally like the design, even though it lacks proper visual hierarchy and balance. Baby blue background works well with dark blue, which complements the cat mascot to a large extent. I shall adapt that to my further design process.

The top right: this one is based on some magazine covers, making me think of a publication or book than a cereal box. I stylise the illustration to be more comic-like which allows more playful and vibrant feelings. Moreover, the mascot having cereal with the zine included in the background, communicates the purpose of the cereal box well.

The bottom left: I came up a new way to play with the product photography with a different composition. Yet, I terribly had failed to think about an appropriate representation as the mascot has its mouth open big showing the cereal inside might come off as ‘creepy’ or ‘cannibalism’. With the more defined version of it, I decided to change the whole facial expression of the mascot. As the result, it looks more pleasant and appropriate.

The bottom right: Prioritising the product photography, the cereal cover is more minimal than the others. The rough sketch did not satisfy me in terms of communication with young people, and lacked balance. So I tried to fix it by aligning the pieces of cereals to be more aesthetically pleasing. However, it does not turn out the way I want. Some even said that it looks too minimal that it could be a healthy food product, rather than a fun cereal box.

In conclusion, I have decided to work on the top right cereal box cover design with some elements from the rest that have potential for better outcomes. Mainly, because of the fact that it implies a book cover kind of design and has clear communication (the mascot having cereal), which leads to effective cereal box design for young people.

Rough sketches

‘Do What You Want’ is a zine about mental wellbeing by Ruby Tandoh and Leah Pritchard, which contains various interesting contents related to mental health issues, as well as story submissions by other writers. Each page is consist of different layouts which can be useful to study and adapt to my own zine.

I have gone through each page of the zine and analysed some graphics and layouts from the zine, with different illustration styles as well.