#dadf

For this project as said in my reflective statement, I wanted to challenge my own thought processes & develop my ability to challenge my own ideas and development through critical thinking. Because of this, I decided to work in a pair, as I felt like it’d be a benefit for bouncing these ideas off each other & improving work significantly.  

My aim hasn’t changed, to make a campaign that involved identity & packaging, that not only celebrates but promotes a society that I believe is something special. I and Natasha both related to this brief on a personal level as we both wanted to make something in dedication to John Mitchell, the name of both my Grandad & her Farther, who are both coincidentally passionate gardeners.

Initially, we wanted to create an experimental typeface; using the anatomy of typography and the techniques of gardening to make an explanatory type to inform people on how to correctly garden by splitting the characters etc. However; a couple weeks in we realised this made the typeface look like a stencil due to the fact we were directly editing the characters; this was when we had a rethink of our approach to the brief & also how to answer the deliverables in terms of our own interests as we were veering off track a little.

Throughout this project, I carried out targeted research at the specific areas I’m interested in. I also gathered some concept ideas from separate areas like looking at other student work (posts here & here); this gave me an insight into what other students are doing internationally. I also found a lot of different ideas throughout looking at previous d&ad winners. The idea of making a subscription box came from my self reflective research; “eat pak’d”a case study from Anthem Worldwide agency. A joint research source that was key to our project was looking at Charlotte Day’s campaign work for Lush Cosmetics - the aesthetic of decorative typography was the pushing factor for us after one of our tutorials to focus on the growth aspect of the botanicals which then followed with myself carrying out growth studies of each species selected from the society’s website.

Throughout this brief, I’ve been given a lot of constructive feedback which has helped a lot with pushing this project forward. However, there was one piece of feedback I decided to not take action on. One of these being because to put the “packaged by” personalised stickers on the interior of the subscription box. This being because of the sticker being on the outside, it then gives the people handling the box through postage an idea of what the box is about, that it’s a personalised horticultural subscription which then might entice a larger audience into looking into what exactly it is.  

I feel like a few things went pleasantly well in this project. Firstly; I believe that our concept was very strong - our deliverables are all justified and work as a body of work. Secondly, I think that working in a pair really pushed me to improve on my illustrative skills, now I can illustrate realism digitally not only physically. Also, I like that our skills played into each other’s; with my experience being in creating digital web content I was able to make the content for Natasha’s web design quite effectively; which I felt worked very well as a final. Finally; the physicals I produced I took extra time and consideration with as I’ve said in my statement, physical making skills aren’t my forte. I felt this consideration and time dedicated to making my physicals really paid off to something of much higher quality.

Although I’m proud of this body of work; I do think there could be improvements to be made. One of these could be I feel like my reflective statement design could be designed more to correspond with the folds of the poster, I thought that the wording can feel a little cut up by the folds. This is something I’ll bear in mind when next working with this technique. Secondly, I really feel like time handling throughout this project could be improved. I felt extreme pressure throughout this project as I feel like work delegation & timeframes weren’t quite right. This is something myself & my partner could’ve worked on but worked out fine in the end. Finally, there were a few hiccups when making the final concept spreads; when animating I realised the web design hadn't been the right colour; so that the animated typefaces have a slight difference of colour surrounding them. This is something I tried to fix as well as possible within the time I had; by blurring the edges to make it look intentional. Unfortunately, my portfolio pages including this design had already been printed so that there is a single inconsistency between the two sets of prints.

Video Demo of Web Animations

Refined Colour Grade

I feel like now the tone is much cooler & cleaner it looks significantly better; bringing much more attention to the actual packaging design too.

Re-Tweaking the Stickers

I’ve taken on board the feedback given in the crit and created the other seal sticker as a plain mark. I have two on this sheet as I’ll be mocking up two different boxed - one sealed & one open so the marker can look inside.

I also made the mark slightly bigger on the seed packets as I felt the “society” on the mockup read a little too small.

Finally, on the personalized stickers for the members I replaced the “from” and “you personal member” to “packaged with care by” to keep it to one line like suggested.

Refined Packet Composition  

Using the composition to reflect other design assets

All variants of flowers included in the campaign

Using the initial of the flower species to create an obvious typographic link to the socioty& other parts of the campaign.

Changing the flowers for a variation between digital assets

Another thing brought up in the tutorial was that how the two examples of the “digital gardens” weren't communicating the point behind it well enough as both shared the same floral illustrations/garden.

Revised Sweet Pea Animated Timelapse.