Cyberpac Blog: February 2013

Thursday, 28 February 2013

22 Offbeat Ways To Live

The Sunday Times shared in an article 'At Least 20 Different Ways To Live Longer'. Each based on research that attributes to a beneficial lifestyle. In the report, the number of people living past a century has doubled in the past decade, according to the Office for National Statistics.

From having more coffee to enjoying passionate sex, these offbeat ways have reflected better living according to various studies.

Disclaimer: Some images hosted on this blog have been collected from external research associates to be presented as stimulus to those seeking news from the cutting edge of packaging. The imagery is not being presented as our own and copyright still belongs to the owner/creator of said work.

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

LOL: New Punctuation Marks For The 21st Century

Humor website College Humor has proposed eight new punctuation marks that are relevant and useful for today’s social media-fuelled society.

These hilarious fictional punctuation marks not only convey the passive-aggression, subtle nuances and sincere/sarcastic subtexts that are an essential part of the text-messaging culture, but also reveal the common quirks and traits of the smartphone-carrying generation.

View all eight of these innovative new punctuation marks below:

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

10 Tips For Packaging Designers

Whenever we go to supermarkets, clothes shops, markets and any place where there are sold items, we would always see items and products sealed inside a box, a pack or whatever. These would come in various sizes, shapes and colours. You can even easily distinguish your favourite food with just one glance because of its packaging.

Here are some top tips for creating that attention grabbing packaging that will make the products fly off the shelves:

1. Be creative and unique

If you want your product to be patronised by many, you can start with creative packaging. Some products have mazes, crossword puzzles etc to encourage consumers to buy the item. Some even have collectibles with it so that they have to complete a certain collection like cards, paper dolls, and others. You can use a variety of shapes in your packaging, too.

2. Choose the colours and fonts

Choose a colour that suits the product or is an existing company colour. Make sure also that you will be using the right combination and contrast for the text. The text should be clear and readable; for example don't use orange text on a red background for it won’t be readable.

Choose a font that will best represent the product. Don't use fancy fonts that could be too hard to read, this needs to be read quickly and easily so be sure it is readable and legible.

A Font For Clients Who Don't Understand 'Lorem Ipsum'

Most of us in the creative industry would know what “Lorem Ipsum” is—filler text for mock-ups. But there are some clients who think it’s an actual foreign language, and don’t ‘understand’ it.

To overcome this disaster, Oslo, Norway-based advertising agency Dinamo Kommunikasjon has created the font ‘BLOKK’ especially for the design-idiot client. According to its website, the font is “for quick mock-ups and wireframing for clients who do not understand Latin”.

As a way to visually simplify things, BLOKK looks as if it’s text highlighted in black—without any hint of letters or punctuation—making it easier for viewers to understand.

To test if the font helps avoid misunderstandings with clients, you can download BLOKK from its website.

Thursday, 21 February 2013

Diet Coke & marc Jacobs

Diet Coke, the world’s #1 selling diet soft drink is privileged to announce that leading visionary, Marc Jacobs, has been unveiled as Creative Director exclusively for 2013. The partnership will be an exciting element of the ‘Sparkling Together For 30 Years’ campaign, as the brand celebrates its milestone 30th Anniversary.

Marc Jacobs will bring his unique vision to the brand, by creating a limited edition collection of must-have bottles and cans, uniting the stylish and light-hearted personalities of both icons. Inspired by the three decades, the chic designs capture the rise of female empowerment through the ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, with a whimsical twist - true to Jacobs’ signature style.

“I feel very privileged to be the new Creative Director of Diet Coke and put my stamp on the 30th Anniversary campaign. Diet Coke is an icon… and I love an icon.” - Marc Jacobs

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Friendship Dairies

Friendship Dairies needed a way to reach 100% of their target audience. How? By bringing a little colour and sass to the dairy case. With packaging becoming the new POS, especially when it comes to clean stores, it was decided to amplify Friendship’s fun personality at the dairy case to a point where even their competitors’ consumers couldn’t help but love ‘em. With a sophisticated package redesign, Friendship was able to elevate their brand’s personality, as well as shopability—filling an unmet need in the cottage cheese category.

As a result of qualitative and quantitative testing, asking consumers what was most important to them, they were able to give them exactly what they wanted. Sassy lid and tub discovery lines were also added to introduce a fun, witty dialogue at shelf, and to help differentiate from competitors with Friendship’s “all natural” stance.”

Shopability was strengthened with the migration to single key colours. These new bright and punchy key colours make an impact on the shelf especially when viewed as a family. Because shoppers look for milkfat percentage first, each variety’s percentage font size was increased by 400%, allowing shoppers to find their favorite SKUs quickly and be on their way. Brand recognition was also improved by increasing the size of the iconic dove.

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

Sweet Table

Sweet Table is a confectionery and catering boutique based in Madrid, España. From beautiful cakes to candy tables, this small business prides itself on handmade and personalised sweet treats.

The goal was to create an identity that reflected their sweet personality and attracted the deserved attention to their products. So what more appropriate than "eye candy" for our design concept; making it a sweet sight.

The result was an identity based on the colours pink and brown and a base shape inspired on cookie cutters. This allowed the creation of a series of icons that could be used in a number of different ways as to allow flexibility and personalisation.

Monday, 18 February 2013

Green Mustache

Green Mustache is a great little brand and packaging design project from the incredibly talented, South Carolina based agency Motto.

Here’s the low down from Motto:
 “There is an increasing variety of “healthy” smoothie and drink options available in stores, but only Green Mustache was created specifically for kids. Green Mustache is an ultra-premium, organic, fruit & green veggie-based super smoothie for fussy kids in flavours they love. Each 10-oz bottle provides one serving of fruits and one serving of vegetables from nutrient-dense leafy greens like spinach and kale, and nutrition from other super ingredients like Salba® chia and coconut water. Green Mustache nourishes the next generation in a fun and healthy way! We created the name, brand identity, package design and website design for the Green Mustache brand.”

In this case the design really starts and ends with the great naming (produced by Motto). With a name like Green Mustache the graphics must have been crying out for said “Mustache” to appear somewhere and somewhere just happened to be on the upper lip of some incredibly cute and well rendered characters. They appear on the bottle as friendly, bold, colourful creatures and really bring the packaging to life. From there not much is needed, just a hand rendered style logo which is also charming and in keeping with the characters and informative text rendered in an informal rounded font.

This design fits the product perfectly and safely ensures that this smoothie range will stand out in even the most crowded of supermarkets, having delivered a cute and lovable design that anybody can warm to no matter what their age.

Friday, 15 February 2013

CMYK Playing Cards

CMYK Playing Cards, brilliantly stripping away all the heritage and history of good playing card design, they've removed everything we could, The suits have been swapped for the printer's choice of ink: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, and the design on the back created from the kind of utilitiarian registration marks and checks usually never seen by the public.

Clever, simple and as easy as ever to use - the cards are coloured by different opacities of ink, creating an amazing gradient when fanned out in your hand during that tense print-ready poker game...

Thursday, 14 February 2013

Valentine's Day Chocolate Wrapper

Download a wonderful and free Valentine's Day Chocolate Wrapper from Love vs Design!

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

Circle 21 Candles

Circle 21 Candles produces all natural soy candles in a line of location-themed scents. The candles are hand-poured into recycled wine bottle containers and topped with “branded” corks to keep the candles smelling fresh.

For the labels, they created a blank letterpress label template and used custom rubber stamps for each scent. This not only allowed the client to easily and economically add new scents but also gave each candle a unique, one-of-a-kind feel.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

The 'Elephants' Of Typography

Why stick to the old adage of 'Elements of Typographic Style,' when you can say, 'Elephants of Typographic Style' instead?

Grant Snider has skillfully interpreted a book he read into a comic that will make you welcome an elephant (or several) into your room. Of course, typography is quite hard to summarise in a few square boxes, but nevertheless, Snider's tongue-in-cheek simplicity does not fail to draw any typography lover, in.

Hope you're having an elephantastic time with the image below.

Monday, 11 February 2013

Everyday Dishonesty 'Glorified' In Artful Posters

New York-based designer Lauren Hom understands the everyday lies we tell ourselves and others, and has incorporated our usually empty self-mantras into very delightful posters. Who knows, maybe letting ourselves live a little is the best way to achieving these small, but important, personal goals.

Do you know anyone else that would love/benefit from these prints-with-a-flair?