OUGD603 - YCN GUCC - Research

For my research I started by trying to look at companies who already customised things for their customers such as Funky Pigeon, Moonpig and boomf. I learned a lot about how the process works - they often have pre-designed templates that customers can simply place images and text into. This doesn’t offer much freedom but it means that even the least creative people can create a nice looking card or gift for someone. Boomf was probably the most relevant company I looked at in regards to their products. They started by offering a service of printing photos onto marshmallows to send as gifts. I found that they now have expanded this into chocolates, pop out cards and much more. It was really helpful looking at their process for customisation with the chocolate as it has given me a good idea of the steps to include for the customisation of the bars.

Next I moved onto looking at chocolate packaging. I came across Sandeman’s chocolate box sets (figure 1). I really liked the use of the repeat pattern of the flavours, to give a hint to what’s inside. Also the text used is simple and to the point - it tells you what it is without much more information. The use of the white background creates a really nice crisp contrast against the imagery to make for quite a striking design without the use of too many colours. Perhaps in our designs we should think of letting the colours of the product shine through like used here.

This shows a lovely example of how illustrations and hand rendered type can be used to create a friendly approachable design. The use of characters makes the design feel more personal furthered by the use of hand rendered type. Because Polly has some good hand rendered type skills I think that the use of handwriting will really benefit the design in making each design feel individual and unique to the customer.

Another good use of hand rendered typography is in this Marchoc hot chocolate packaging (figure 3). The use of different type weights emphasises the dominant flavours. The type itself is very friendly and approachable, making you want to pick the packaging up from the shelf. Contrast this with figure 1 and you can tell that it feels warmer and more friendly because of the use of illustrations and organic elements rather than imagery. The only thing I’m not sure about in this design is the colour - I really like the orange contrasted against the beige but I feel that the blue is out of place and clashes to much with the other elements of the design.