Brief 3: Marina's Pies // Submission Boards

3. Marina's Pie Boards by Emily Fairbank

I am very pleased with how this brief turned out. I set this brief as a bit of challenge for me as it was very different from the style that I normally work in where I use colour and bold typography to make the packaging stand out. For this brief I wanted to produce a range of packaging that focused on the colour and texture of the packaging and how it can affect a piece of packaging. The other tester for me was to keep the design as simple as possible, minimal and smart. I found this hard to design for on Adobe Illustrator because the net looked very plain, very different from my normal style of working. I am very pleased with how the packaging has turned out, I feel I have effectively designed a range of packaging the reflects the brand identity, learning that a design does not need to be full of printed colour to be powerful.

Brief 3: Website Proposal and Promotion

Brief 3: Photographs of Marina's Pies

Pie Photographs by Emily Fairbank

Brief 3: Full Packaging Range

Brief 3: Identity

Brief 3: Take away pie packaging range

CHANGES / ALTERATIONS

I moved the logo over to the left slightly so that "Marian's" was more centrally placed on the lid because at the moment you cant read all of it very easily. 

I also didnt' think there was enough information on the take away packaing. I did not need to put the ingredients on because

Brief 3: Changes to the Large packaging

I got some feedback on the brown packaging with the colour strips and asked how I could make it smarter. The general opinion was that the colour gradients were the problem and unnessary. The next step was to go back to the basics; to focus purely on the stock, the strips had to be the same colour as the logo; black.

Another suggestion was to use imagery / icons for the food instead of typography, to have a bit of variation and balance, as well as being more visually engaging. A simple change that had a very positive effect on my design.

I still wanted to keep a bit of colour in the design so I kept the colour in the gradient and kept the small typographic label on the front of the design 

I traced a vectored a few images on illustrator, keeping them very basic and as line drawings; finer lines look more sophisticated. 

This is the new range of labes. In the end I decided to change the back label to being black so it was the same at the front labels, and made the overall packaging design much smarter and more uniform. 

I ended up replacing the logo at the bottom of the tag with the flavour of the pie as there were too many logos in too close-a proximity. 

Brief 4: Packaging mock ups with the colour labels

I applied my initial design a basic box net and cut out a piece of the lid that you can see the pie through. The first pictures here are just testing out the size of the logo and colour strip in relation to the rest of the packaging, before printing on my chosen stock. 

I think the logo is much to large in relation to the rest of the box and the shape of the die cut section makes the lid of the box look more like an envelope than a pie packaging, although this may be because it is printed on white paper. I don't really like the horizontal spread of the gradient across strip so I'll go back and have a look to see if it works better when it is fades vertically over the label (from top to bottom). I do think the placement of the logo on the colour band works well although from a distance this orange and red colour contrasted with the black of the gradient reminds is starting to look more like a fast food restaurant logo which sells spicy food rather than a homemade ham and chicken pie.

I have proposed that the flavour is printed on a seperate label from the packaging and is also stuck on like the band. On screen this looked good but when it is printed out and mocked up the name isn't very clear and doesn't fit with the rest of the packaging, I think the whole design is starting to look a bit cheap, but ill see what that the difference is when these labels are applied to the brown packaging. 

I have placed the logo on most of the sides of the box for the reason that no matter what angle you see the packaging from you can see the branding. Initially I thought this was a good idea, but when it is printed out it looks too overcrowded and the logo and the packaging starts to loose it's quality.

BACK LABELS - information, nutrition and ingredients. The label isn't meant to be this big in comparison to the rest of the packaging, I wanted it to be a third of the size but I forgot to scale down this page when printing it.

NETS PRINTED ON BROWN STOCK

This is the stock that I have in mind to use for my final packaging designs. The texture and colour of it fits perfectly with both the brand concept and the packaging concept; visually represent the high quality of the packaging through the stock whilst retaining the homemade nature of the business.

I dont think the orange colour strip is working too well either packaging mock ups, doing the exact opposite of what I wanted, the strip is distracting the eye away from the packaging stock and logo rather than emphasising it. 

I have made all the logos much smaller but still kept the same number on the net to see if it was just the size that was leading to the overcrowded effect

This is the size I originally intended for the back label to be, it looks much better and is a good size; just big enough to read comfortably but not too big that it covers the stock. 

This gradient printed much darker and muddier than I hoped, I knew that it would be different from the colours on screen but when printed out the colour lost its impact and starts to look more like packaging for a pie filled with red meat than a sweet, very cherry pie. 

I think that the blue strip works best with the brown packaging, all the other labels are OK but not as smart as I wanted the packaging to look. 

Brief 3: Packaging Nets for the large pies

This is the net and design for the large pie packaging. At the moment the net is not accurate to the size of the pie, this is just a standard net I have take out of a book. The pie packaging I am designing is going to be 10cm by 10cm and 6cm in height. 

This is how size and positioning of the colour tag on the packaging. I want it to cover all the sides except the bottom of the packaging. 

Brief 3: Colour and Packaging development

The focus of this packaging brief was on the choice of stock and how the colour, texture and gsm could affect the quality of a range of packaging. Marina's pies are homemade, natural, friendly so I started off by using natural, warm colours using a swatch I created from another pie project on Behance that inspired me. 

Source: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Pie-Vinyl/6363817

I adopted a couple of these colours I took from the Pie and Vinyl designs to see what they would look like on Marina's logo. A challenge for me in this brief is not to focus too much on using colour to identify text and object with, so at I am keeping the colours very earthy and neutral. 

I went back to test what the pie would look like in the geometric shape, I was interested to see if it worked better with the shape, looking like a seal of an award and giving the pies more credablility. 

This definately didn't work and it is start to look more like less and less interesting, also by placing it in a circle it became rather difficult to incorporate the pie as well. 

After testing a few more shapes I went back to my original logo, I like to check that I am happy with the logo and to do this I always go back and apply previous logo designs and compare the difference, it is a bit like a process of elimination that helps me move forward with a design. 

I have decided that for the pie packaging, I am going to have different labels / bands going around the boxes with the logo and flavour on it. The main packaging box will stay the same over the large pie range, and the only thing that will change is the colour of the label. I feel that this will make the packaging look smart and sophisticated, not printing over too much of the stock and instead focusing on smaller ways to differentiate between each packaging design.  

I thought about having a luminous pink colour, juxtaposing the pie making with a very feminine colour but then decided it was not very appropriate and made the pie brand look more fake than natural. For a bit of inspiration I started looking over other projects by Ziggurat Brands and the colour schemes they used. This was the design studio who branded and packaged 'Higgity Pies', the basis and inspiration behind this brief. 

Source: http://www.zigguratbrands.com/

 Both of these packaging designs use a rich brown contrasted with a lighter, brighter colour. At the moment I am planning on using a light brown paper stock that will be mounted on card to achieve the high gsm so I have started off with using a couple of these colours as inspiration.

I have divided the pie business into three sections, and will be designing a range of large and take away packaging for three flavours; vegetarian pie, ham and chicken pie and a very cherry pie. 

These are initial mock ups of how I planned the label to be placed on the pie packaging. I want to have the logo printed somewhere on the brown packaging as well as being on the label. 

BRAND STRAPLINE

This is something that I thought I was going to have a bit of trouble coming up with, but instead I came up with it fairly swiftly by just thinking simply about Marina and her pie business...simple...she is passionate about pies. When I first started with this brief, one of the names I was going to call the business was 'pie-passion' or pi-assion', a play on Marian's love for pies...so the strap line is straight to the point...Passionate about Pies. 

To attempt Marina's passion about pies, I felt it was appropriate to place it in the pie icon I am using for the logo. I tested out using the typeface for "Marina's" to see if it would make the strapline more personal but it didn't work very well because from a distance it wasn't readable. 

Green is for the vegetarian pie, Red / Orange for the ham and chicken pie, and then a rich pink / purple colour for the very cherry pie. 

I have decided to add another pie flavour, the sea food pie because this is another of marina's speacialities and the blue worked well with the other pies.