Generating Package Artwork - Part 2

Final Cereal Box Design

In my own time I continued preparing the artwork and in order to keep a consistent theme running through the design I chose to recreate the nutritional information boxes. I decided to just remove one portion and change the description of the cereal to match that which the image portrays. I left the general information the same, as this isn’t necessary to consider for the exercise. Though it goes without saying that if this were a live project, careful attention would need to be placed upon such as to provide accurate information to the consumer. In regards to the design I chose a subtle light yellow to highlight the storage instructions rather then the original grey.

Faded black

Chosen opacity and colour

I kept the packaging to include two font families, Kohinoor Devanagari and Hobo Std Medium, while using variations in the typeface style as to match the hierarchy of the text. I was careful to consider all elements in my design process and felt that the right hand side of the net was a bit plain and boring. Due to this being a children’s cereal I felt it needed another fun element within the design, this being a collectable token which would allow the child and/or parent to save up for special collectables. The method I took in applying the character to the token design came about by accident while creating such. I had placed the character within the parameter of the token and due to the opacity being reduced for the token layer (which was above the character) this led to it create a blend mode style effect. I looked at placing the character on as a basic faded image, though found this to be lacking in appeal compared to when it appeared through the semi-transparent colour. This is due to the integration, which appears within the design when combined with the label’s colour. I believe this is so due to the subtlety that comes across from using a more gentle and relaxed colour.

As seen to the left in the top image, for the back of the packaging I created a very simplistic “spot the odd one out” game as demonstration to the possible age appropriate content which can be placed here. I feel as though the game may be slightly too easy, though this could be remedied by placing the alien character into the rest of the UFO’s and changing just one colour, i.e. the aliens colour for instance.

Design back against scoreboard

For our third and final session looking at prototyping, I demonstrate how I have progressed from initial hand-drawn ideas to a printed and freestanding model. In order to ensure the print of the cereal box came out right, I ensured the colour set-up was at CMYK and then selected Adobe PDF within the save as options, before selecting “High Quality Print” as the pre-set. Next we were asked to place our design within one corner of the A2 pages’ that were being prepared on InDesign for printing. Once printed I then using a craft-knife carefully cut-out my cereal box net and then proceeded to use the creasing pen and scoreboard on the back of the box net as to create clean, neat folds. Finally I used glue stick to stick down the sides and flaps before positioning and photographing my prototype. Upon looking at the photos I found them to be a little dull and used the curves tool appropriately to fix such.

Front of box

Back of box

Bottom up

Overall I have really enjoyed this exercise and look forward to doing similar in my spare time, or as part of a live brief. I am really happy with my outcome, though still feel its missing something which would make it look professional and as though it could be on the supermarket shelves. I Compared mine against those currently in the supermarkets, branded and unbranded and the majority, if not all have at least one element featuring a gradient or the like as to create a 3D look and/or featuring a photograph of the cereal it contains rather then an illustration. However for the purposes of this experimentation I think I did really well and I will keep in mind these points I have noticed for future examples.