Emily's Graphic Design Blog

At the end of the project, final mock-ups of the packaging were printed. The lower cost product mock-ups were printed in a smaller scale with a laser printer, the actual boxes to be printed professionally to be sold. When printed professionally, a spot varnish would enhance the coloured illustrations and the tree logo would be foiled in gold. For the most expensive 15 year old, I thought the packaging should reflect its age and quality, using a silver foil for the illustration rather than a varnish. To recreate this effect, time was taken to research printers in the area, however, the costs were too high for a small batch, reaching £200.00. Therefore, I recreated the effect at home using foil transfers. Once heated using a laminator, the black laser toner acts as an adhesive for the foil creating the foiled effect. The finish isn't as perfect as it would be professionally printed, with some areas not stuck and therefore remaining black. But it provides a good mock-up of how...

Whilst re-designing their packaging, research was undertaken into other possible packaging ideas or products that could expand the brand, for instance if working with beer, a multipack design. However, the Somerset Cider Brandy is sold in ages rather than flavours, meaning a multipack would provide the same product varying only in the age it was matured. Commonly, brandy is given as gifts, therefore, my research focused on current gift sets of other brands, to gain inspiration. My research led me to gift sets with the brandy sold alongside branded glasses. Thus, I began designing a special gift set with this in mind. I chose to design this using the most expensive 15 year old brandy, as this would be the most appropriate at as gift, however, this could be used across all ages. The box design is very similar to the original, the only difference being the doubled width, making room for the glasses. A window was added to allow the glasses to be seen by the customer, the panel f...

After completing the packaging designs, I moved on to the label designs. Initially, I focused on the same style, to retain continuity. This first design uses a common label style, with a convex arc at the top mirroring the arc of the bottle. However, in print this design was too large and cumbersome for an already bottom heavy bottle. The design features the coloured illustration, again, the colour assigned by its age. On the front label, this is placed similarly to the box designs, whereas, on the back, two layers of the pattern are combined to give a full background and border for the text heavy design. After experimenting with the previously bulky design, a much narrower square label was created, to slim down the bottle and provide a sleek appearance. This shape modernises the bottle, matching it more closely to the tall box design. On the back label, the full border was narrowed to a top and bottom border, giving more height to the label whilst retaining space for the typ...

 For this lesson, we were tasked with designing a character of type with cut-out illustrations or shapes. To link with my ongoing project, I chose to use imagery of apples, leaves and branches. I used the 'S' in the logo of the Somerset Cider Brandy Company as my shape. To begin I folded a piece of paper and cut out the shapes I required, cutting two sides at once. Once cut, I began assembling the design creating clusters of the apples and leaves where the stroke of the line was thickest. In between these elements I used branches as connecters, giving contrast and realism to the tree design. Once assembled, photographs were taken with a bright spot light placed across the pattern to give darker shadows. This is an interesting and effective method of forming type and combining illustration.

After completing my experimental research into different media, I decided that the fine lined illustration used to form the wood block imitation design, was the most suited to the brand. The style combined the traditional illustration with a modern design as the bold lines gave impact. Using this as inspiration, I began re-designing the brandy box. To best use the design, I wanted to create a continuous pattern around the four sides of the box. I measures and drew the box net on A3 paper and using the previous design as a starting point, illustrated the pattern to follow the width of the net. I wanted to incorporate the design on the top and bottom of the tall box to fill the space but also frame the type in the centre. Therefore, I needed to measure the height of the space I wanted the illustration to fill. To join the pattern continuously, the design needed to be cut in half and the pages swapped, to connect the outside edges together in the centre. Once the hand-drawing...

In this lesson, we experimented with juxtaposition and the use of contrast in graphic design. We were tasked to design posters for the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibit 'Ugly: Beauty through the ages'. For these designs, I focused on the use of painted portraits rather than photography, to connect with the National Portrait Gallery. I wanted to use contrast to make the audience question the title 'Ugly' and what or if anything is being considered ugly in the poster. To do this, I juxtaposed the statuesque image of the royal portraits with brighter and more exotic portraits. By de-saturating the background portraits and keeping the colour in the foreground images, the contrast raises questions. Are the realist paintings more beautiful than the colourful works of post-impressionism and symbolism? To emphasise the title, 'ugly' I used the ink dropper tool to select a colour from the foreground images, creating a cohesive design.

As the third medium to experiment with, I used Charcoal pencils. These give a dark black line and high contrast whilst keeping the same texture as oil pastel. This gives them a traditional yet abstract feel. However, as these are charcoals in a pencil form, they have a sharp point forming smaller strokes than the larger oil pastels, allowing for more detail to be added. The monotone element of the medium allows for more emphasis on tone and light rather than colour. The black and white also provides a more edgy aesthetic with a modern industrial feel, a bit more removed from the countryside setting of the distillery. The monotone nature of the medium also allows for the editing techniques learnt in the 'wood cut' lesson, using the 'duotone' tools to edit the colour of the entire piece. In the example below, I used a red monotone to give a printed feel and colourful impact. This is perhaps the most removed medium from the current style of the Somerset Cider Brandy Com...

The next medium I chose to experiment with was Oil Pastel, due to its bold colours and distinctive textures. The strokes are quite large, therefore the overall image is more abstract. I chose to illustrate an apple as this would provide colour and tone to practice with. Different pastels need to be layered to mix colours, which doesn't allow for extensive blending. This layering provides a stylised appearance with bolder colours providing a more modern feel. Despite this, the design is still traditional with its uneven texture that is difficult to replicate graphically and natural colours. This medium also provides two dimensions with distance providing more clarity to the image. The medium suits the Somerset Cider Brandy Company's traditional ideologies and bright countryside location.

Due to the traditional nature of the Somerset Cider Brandy Company, a 300 year old established brand that pride themselves on their historic achievements and processes, I wanted to experiment with traditional mediums and textures. To begin this research, I chose an existing and a new design to paint allowing me to evaluate the medium. The first painting is a recreation of the previous tree and copper pipe design. The muted pastel palette of watercolour forms a natural and soft focus aesthetic to the illustration, which suits the Somerset and english countryside setting. However, in terms of the trunk, this transparency has allowed the green of the tree to come through the brown of the bark, not giving a distinct finish. The layering of colour provides texture and helps to form the bush of the canopy of the tree without intricate details needing to be added. Also, the path of the paint when applied to the the paper leaves an uneven edge to the shapes, creating the leaf like forms. Th...

To further explore Type and Image, we were tasked with drawing a black and white illustration to be later created as a vector image in Illustrator. For this illustration I used two black fine liners, one in 0.4 and the other 0.8, to achieve varying weights and a more appealing stylised design. Using the same theme as the last pieces, I used apples on branches, linking with my assignment's brand. The illustration was designed using a variety of shapes to give interesting elements to edit later once turned into a vector. Once the illustration was completed, it was scanned into Photoshop. From here the levels were adjusted to make the black bold and background brighter. Next, it was copied into Illustrator to be converted to a vector. To do this, I used the Image Trace tool, selected from the windows menu. This tool traces the black line of the hand-drawn image creating a vector shape. At this stage, the threshold can be adjusted to select the desired amount of colour and f...