Project 3: Brand Merchandising Project - Packaging & Merchandising Design
(Week 11 - Week 14)
Aisya Diva Anwagodsa (0365505)
Packaging & Merchandising Design / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Project 3 - Brand Merchandising Project
Table of Contents
Lectures
Project 3
Click here to see the final result
This project was a continuation of our collaboration with students from The Business School and Psychology students. For a little bit of recap, my group was working with the DYO care product, the product is a tumbler that has a dual chamber where customers could store two different kinds of drinks. As it is called DYO Care, the tumbler also has specific features for its target customers as described below:
- Pill container: A pill container that attaches to the bottom of the bottle, which could help customers to store their vitamins or medicine.
- Drink tracker: A transparent drink tracker that located at the side of the bottle, help customer to track their drink phase and as a reminder for refilling the bottle.
Below is the sketch for the tumbler provided by the business students:
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| Fig. 1.0 Dyo Care Sketch |
Discussion: In week 11, we had a discussion about what kind of merchandise we want to create for this project. During class, Mr. Shamsul suggested deciding on the theme of our merch (The theme could determine what kind of merch we want to create, which could also help us to be more focused on deciding the merchandise).
After discussing with my groupmates, we decided on having a travel theme for our merch. Then we came up with 5 items for the merch that we have to make, we also have to decide about the promotional strategy, where we want to showcase or promote our product:
Merchandise:
- Bottle carrier
- Bottle silicone sleeve
- Foldable shopping bag
- Mini planner & travel journal
- Mini Cleaning bottle kit (small brush, zipper pouch, and fiber cloth)
Promotional Strategy:
- Street billboard, located in Malaysia
- Lrt station advertisement (signage/billboard)
- Instagram advertisement
- Travel app advertisement
- Cardboard rack
Designing Process
Before I begin to explain the design process, I would like to express my disappointment with the business students who are supposed to be in charge of providing materials and prototypes. Or if they cannot provide, they could be more communicative with us (it took them so long to reply to our question), because the communication among the group is all messy, and it slows down the process. I hope this can be improved in the future.
With the decided items, our group divided the task to create each merch:
- Aisya - Bottle carrier, base of bottle prototype, Instagram ad, and travel app advertisement
- Jovan - Foldable shopping bag, street billboard, and silicone sleeve
- Lizzie - Travel journal, cardboard rack, and bus stop billboard
- Sheryne - Cleaning set, bottle tracker prototype, Instagram ad, and LRT station ad
Making Strap Design
I started by collecting some inspiration from Pinterest (of course). My main focus is to make the design look simple but still represent the DYO brand.
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| Fig. 1.2 Bottle carrier inspo |
As we don't have the prototype of the bottle, I can only use a bottle from another brand that has a similar design to DYO care for help me imagine what the bottle strap will look like when put on the bottle. In this matter, we use bran TYESO as a model. After looking at some designs, I was interested in making a bottle strap + bottle carrier that covers the whole bottle, but still reveals a little bit of the bottle color.
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| Fig. 1.3 Bottle model Credit: Tyeso |
Ps. In this matter, Mr. Shamsul allowed us to use a product that has a similar design for the mockup.
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| Fig. 1.4 Bottle carrier sketches Week 11 |
From these sketches, we decided to go with sketch number (1), which looks simple, could protect the bottle, and still represent the bottle. At first, I tried tpp find a bottle strap mockup from the internet, but could not get the design that looks similar with our design, so I decided to make the mockup with Illustrator.
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| Fig. 1.5 Illustrator canvas of strap bottle mockup |
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| Fig. 1.6 Mockup draft 1 Week 12 |
After having a discussion with Mr. Shamsul, he demanded to provide more realistic mockups and to display them as their function (bottle strap on the bottle). It's a bit challenging for me, as I could not find anything close to our design, and there's no bottle that looks like a DYO care product. But then I found a bottle carrier that has a similar color to our design, so I decided to pick that up and use it as a base for our mockup. The brand of the bottle carrier is BLACKBROOK.
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| Fig. 1.7 Base for bottle strap mockup Credit: Blackbrook |
I use Photoshop to bring the design to life:
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| Fig. 1.8 Bottle carrier mockup Week 12 - 13 |
Some main tools that I use to make the mockup:
- Hue/saturation to change the color
- Selection tool + Mask to change or adjust a certain part of the strap
- Shape to modify the design
- Effect to make the logo look realistic
- Single adjustment
And to make the bottle carrier look functioning, I also made the bottle mockup using a TYESO tumbler as the base:
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| Fig. 1.9 Bottle mockup Week 14 |
It can be seen in the picture that I added the pill container, with a stainless steel list to differentiate the part of the bottle. The mockup that I made is from the front side, that's why it does not showcase the drink tracker (because it's supposed to be on the side of the bottle). The tools that I use to edit the mockup are similar to the ones I use to make the bottle carrier mockup.
After creating the bottle and the strap, I should assemble the items, but I realized, the design I made on figure 1.6 covered the whole bottle, which means the container cannot be opened while using the bottle strap. That's why I decided to change the bottle carrier design:
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| Fig. 1.10 Final Mockup for the bottle strap Week 14 |
What I did was I removed 3/4 of the bottle strap and moved the logo to the top. I also duplicated the stitch detail of the bottle carrier at the top and placed it at the bottom, so it looks neat and more realistic. I also adjusted the color again and added shadow to make it more realistic.
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| Fig. 1.11 Final design Week 14 |
Progress throughout the week: All group members
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| Fig. 1.12 Mockup draft Week 12-14 |
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| Fig. 1.13 Final mockups Week 14 |
Making Promotional material
- Instagram advertisement
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| Fig. 1.14 Instagram advertisement Week 14 |
For making the promotional material, my task is to create one Instagram ad and one travel app advertisement. For the Instagram advertisement, I decided to create a poster that introduces the other color variant of the bottle. Here is the process:
- I adjusted the color using hue to create 2 different tones of the bottle.
- Placing it and adding shadow and masking to adjust the lighting using brushes (this is one of my favorite ways to adjust the lighting).
- Added a gradient element to maintain the design consistency from the packaging. The gradient itself has a meaning; it represents the life transition of the buyer to a more health-conscious lifestyle.
- Travel app advertisement
The reason why we decided on putting advertisements on the travel app is to attract one of the target audiences with our merchandise that uses traveling as the main point. In here, we are using the 14th anniversary event of the Bli Bli app and making a scenario where DYO Care is doing a partnership with Bli Bli during that event.
This is the medium for putting the advertisement:
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| Fig. 1.15 Travel app advertisement |
I just copied and pasted the element that I've already prepared, rearranged it, and added text to give information. I use Figma Web to put the whole design on the mockup.
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| Fig. 1.16 Travel app advertisement |
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| Fig. 1.17 Travel app advertisement |
Progress throughout the week: All group members
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| Fig. 1.18 Draft |
These are the drafts that we got, which we showed during the presentation, but we received some feedback on the design to make it more consistent by using the same element.
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| Fig. 1.19 Final result |
Blog Links: Group 1 DYO Care
Final Submission
Fig. 1.20 Final Submission
Week 11
Trying to come up with 5 merch and categorize them into theme to make the merch more useful and consistent, not only design but also function.
Week 12
- The mockup should be displayed based on its function
- Make the design more realistic
- The advertisement/promotional placement should be related to the merchandise theme and located in KL/have the sime vibe with Malaysia
Week 13
- Try to find a bottle that looks similar to the DYO product
- Usea picture of better quality for the mockup
Week 14
- The mockups and merch looks good
- The promotional advertisement still inconsistent, can be improved by using the same design element to maintain the consistency
Experience: This project is actually fun aside from the lack of communication between the TBS and TDS students that were involved (this also affected our project 3, even though we're not working with them anymore). We could experiment and learn how to make merchandise that could work to boost the sales of a brand (also as complementary items for the brand). My groupmates are also cooperative during the project, and we spent a lot of time together to create and put our ideas into the merch.
Observation: I noticed that working in a smaller group could be more manageable, even though we had different ideas, but the task delegation was clear, and everyone is working. Physical meeting every week before our class was also helpful to make sure that we are on the same page, and it makes us easier to review the designs from each member and try to make it consistent, which sometimes still be hard for us. But in the end, we managed to handle it by getting help from Mr. Shamsul.
Findings: Deciding a theme for making merch, was actually something that I have never thought before. It makes our progress much easier and makes more sense. When I used to do Brand Creatove Identity, I only know that I should make a merch that related to my product, without realizing that I'm creating a theme for my own brand's merchandise. This module helped me to realize things that I've never known before and makes me more considerate.
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