Penguin Book - Idea Developments

Concept 1 - 'Milk and Apples'

This design takes the famous scene and symbolism of the milk and apples within the book and transforms it into a contemporary, fun illustration. The colours used, one is bright and vivid colour to make the book look more interesting an engaging to adult both young and old, it also looks different from other books in this genre and would definitely stand out on the shelves. The other colour scheme is more conceptual as it has been taken from Russian propaganda posters from the Stalin period which the book is based on. It gives a subtle hint to the dystopian meaning of the book. The typeface picked works well alongside the illustration and makes the cover look cohesive. 

Concept 2 - Pig as Men

This design works well as it is subtle and unlike the other covers that already exist. It also is quite hidden and conceptual which represents the allegory style of the book, how the story has a hidden meaning and morals within it. The colours picked are again colours taken from the propaganda posters of the Stalin's time. This was to avoid using the colour red, as this had been overused therefore the cover needed a more innovative colour. The typeface fits with the time that the book was written and also the old style collage and colours which have been used. 

Concept 3 - Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better

This cover design and idea uses purely type, showing how the pigs manipulated the animals throughout the book. The title is hidden within the text, to again represent the hidden meanings and morals which are found within the books. The wood background and type shows and represents how the pigs hand-wrote stuff and the animals taught themselves how to write. 

Penguin Book - Initial Ideas

Penguin book - Target Audience Research

Penguin Book - Themes, Ideas, Characters and Objects

Themes

- Power
- Lies 
- Deceit
- Corruption
- Control
- Rules and Order
- Dreams and Hopes
- Foolishness
- Pride
- Religion
- Violence
- Cunning
- Clever
- Education

Characters

- Napoleon
- Snowball
- Squealer
- Boxer
- Mollie
- Benjamin
- Old Major
- Clover
- Mr and Mrs Jones
- Bluebell, Jessie and Pincher
- The Sheep
- Nine Dogs
- Mr Pilkington
- Mr Whymper
- Mr Frederick

Ideas

- Allegory, (Story, Poem or Picture that can be interpreted to find a hidden meaning or moral)
- Fable
- Dystopia
- Russian Revolution
- Stalin
- Marxism
- Communism
- Dictatorship
- Soviet Union
- 'Fuse political purpose and artistic purpose'
- Universal representation of totalitarianism 
- Politcal fable and animal fable

Motifs

- Songs
- Poems
- Slogans
- “Beasts of England” 
- Minimus’s ode to Napoleon 
- The sheep’s chants
- “Animal Farm, Animal Farm'
- State Rituals
- Parades
- Military awards

Symbols

- Animal Farm (Symbolises Russia and the soviet union under the communist party rule)
- The Barn (Where most of the oppressing and changes are made)
- The Windmill (The pigs manipulation of the other animals for their own gain)
- From an allegorical point of view, the windmill represents the enormous modernisation projects undertaken in Soviet Russia after the Russian Revolution.

Penguin book - Animal Farm - Visual Research

Similarities

- Use Red, Black and Pink

- Nearly every cover includes an image of a pig on the front. 

- Uses the same quote on a few covers "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others'

- Uses white text

- Similar colours, style and artwork to Russian propaganda posters. 

- Use of geometric shapes

- Sans serif typography.

- Handwritten type

What to avoid

- Using images/illustrations of pigs/the main characters

- Use of the colour red

-  Steer away from using quotes from within the book.

Penguin Book - Animal Farm - Brief Analysis

The Brief

‘In a hundred ways Animal Farm triggers our modern intelligence and persists in its relevance, and its seemingly simple yet subtle fable still belongs to us as we try to find our way through the changing political and moral labyrinths of twentieth-century history.’ - Malcolm Bradbury

We are looking for a cover design which will reflect the book’s status as one of the great modern political allegories of our time, as relevant today as it was when it was first published over 50 years ago.  It is rich with ideas, characters, allegory, political and moral philosophy – read it and decide for yourself how best to showcase the content of this remarkable novel through your cover design and bring it to a new generation of readers.

Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy supplied and be designed to the specified design template – B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine width 8 mm, incorporating the Penguin branding and all additional elements such as the barcode. Please refer to the Submissions Details page for full details of the spec and how to submit your entry.

What the judges are looking for

We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. While all elements of the jacket need to work together as a cohesive whole, remember that the front cover must be effective on its own and be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting. It also needs to be able to work on screen for digital retailers such as Amazon.

The winning design will need to:

• - have an imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief
• - be competently executed with strong use of typography
• - appeal to a contemporary readership
• - show a good understanding of the marketplace
• - have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against

Analysis

Deadline:

Tuesday 6 March 2018, 12:00

Mandatory Requirements:

Needs to have a strong use of typography, needs to be innovative and stand out against other existing titles. The design needs to be contemporary and imaginative. 

Target Audience:

Young and Older Adults

Keywords: 

- Engaging
- Innovative
- Unique
- Distinct
- Abstract
- Contemporary 
- Different
- Imaginaitve
- Original

Initial Ideas:

- Silhouettes
- Type, using quotes from the books
- In the style of tsarist propaganda posters
- Animal commandments

Research:

- Read and analyse the book and the characters
- Look up famous quotes and different opinions and meanings of the book
- Look at existing covers
- Look at the marketplace, similar style and genre of books and which ones do well. 
- Research tsarist Russia and the artwork that was around at that time.

Grown Up Chocolate Company Identity: Target Audience

Women

Chocolate is hands down the number one food women crave.

A Crave-Inducing Combination
The ingredients in chocolate create a powerful blend. "The combination gives you that overall optimum brain happiness," Dr. Mitchell says. 

Theobromine: A caffeine-like stimulant that perks you up.

Tryptophane: Increases the brain's serotonin levels for a happy, feel-good result.

Phenethylamine: Releases endorphins, causing feelings of passion and love.

Sugar and fat: The unbeatable duo that gives chocolate its delectable creamy texture.

The Health Benefits
Cacao contains flavonoids, the antioxidant found in chocolate and red wine. Emerging research claims that flavonoids in dark chocolate can increase blood flow, which could help reduce high blood pressure. "As a general rule, the higher percentage of cacao equals a higher percentage of flavonoids," Dr. Mitchell says.
Have Your Dark Chocolate Cake and Eat It Too
Dark chocolate may not be fat-free, but Dr. Mitchell says that if it's what you crave, enjoy it. "I've given myself permission to pamper without guilt," she says. "Chocolate should be something to look forward to and enjoy. We beat ourselves up enough every day."

In this age, where advertising is more about the lifestyle than the product itself, advertisers are targeting this niche market of women who buy into the lifestyle of skinny as sexy.

So here’s a controversial thought: rather than try to anticipate what all women might want, how about we try to create good design that will appeal to both genders? The Della experience should, if nothing else, teach us that women neither need nor want a bespoke website. We could look instead to brands like Apple, which create female-friendly products (and sites and apps) and conclude that maybe good design simply appeals to men and women alike.

Did you know a woman dedicates only 2.6 seconds to her product selection? Branding designed for women needs a feminine appeal, since women’s focus strategies vary significantly from men’s. While men tend to be single-minded and focused on a task, women multi-taskand are more attentive to details.


Color and image

Packaging design for women goes far beyond making the product a shade of pink.  Surprisingly, pink is low on the spectrum of packaging color preferences. Women like blue the best, with red a close second, according to Packaging Digest. Surveys show that pictures of celebrities on a package do not particularly attract female buyers.

Shape

Women prefer packaging with an appealing shape, visual characteristics, functionality, and an easiness in handling, storage, opening and closing. Functionality and ease of use make a product female-friendly. A visually-appealing shape is desirable, but how a product opens and closes or the level of control of the dispenser is also a key factor in preference.

Text

Keep it simple: remove 50 percent of the words from your marketing message and transpose the rest to a visual. Women love to talk, so let them do the talking, not your package! All lettering on a package should be large and easy to read. In essence, it should scream the benefits of the product inside.  Keep away from technical driven statements on the benefits. A woman doesn’t really care how the product works as long as it works effectively and continuously.

Boxes of chocolate designed for women

Most women have a love-hate relationship with chocolate. Designing a chocolate packaging tailored to women, can be a challenging task! Most chocolate packagings play on the emotional side, while the product comes second. Check out these few examples of chocolate boxes with a feminine touch

Appealing to women as mothers in advertisements varied by product: the image of women as mothers in cacao advertisements changed into wives who get their husband to buy chocolate for them in chocolate advertisements. The Rowntree chocolate advertisement below portrays a woman receiving boxed chocolate from her husband who is eager to see her reaction. Similar to the advertisement above, women are shown in the context of a family and not primarily as individual consumers.

Health Motivated People

Highlights

•
A ‘healthy’ package appearance can inspire a ‘healthy’ product experience.
•
The effect of package appearance on taste evaluation is highly context-dependent.
•
Packaging appearance has little impact on taste evaluation in ‘green’ supermarkets.
•
Shoppers at green supermarkets are less easily persuaded by packaging design.

Highlights

•

Colors and typefaces differ in weight perception.

•

‘Light’ and ‘heavy’ typeface and color function as a product’s healthiness cue.

•

The effect of typeface weight is dependent on a consumer’s health regulatory focus.

•

Individuals aiming at good health are susceptible to subtle health indicators.

•

Explicit effects were corroborated using an implicit measure (IAT).

Packaging sustainability positively influences perceptions of food product quality.
•
Product sustainability moderates the positive effect of packaging sustainability.
•
Product naturalness explains the perceptions of product quality.

Nostalgia in Adults

Things adults miss from their childhood, include these on the packaging as illustations or more abstract designs.  

Nostalgia makes us crave the past. It is a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former time or place, whether it’s for a living memory or experience, for another country, for family and friends, or for era that is perceived as being a simpler time.

Used in design, nostalgia can appeal to the audience on a sentimental and emotive level. No matter how much technology advances and the modern world progresses, nostalgia—the notion of longing—remains an essential human condition. Here’s how to harness the psychological and emotive power of nostalgia in your design.

Nostalgia and Creativity

Research has found that nostalgia can heighten creativity. 

Reinvent childhood memories, Bring back the days of summer, Flashback to simpler times, Celebrate the holidays, Contrast then and now, Create a feel good character, create a look that feels local, dig out historic photographs, Mix vintage fonts, colour it sepia, highight heritage, mid century colour palette, keep it simple, use retro style, make it familar, go old school, merge two disparate ideas. 

As nostalgia evokes a warm and fuzzy feeling it can be used as a sentimental appeal to your audience. Identify how your brand can connect to an aspect of the past and reinterpret your memories or the collective imagination in an abstract way. However, be sure to know your target audience because different generations have different associations and experiences, and to use it in appropriate situations for best effect.

Grown Up Chocolate Company Identity: Contemporary Packaging Design

Fab

Design consultancy Springetts redesigned the packaging  Fab lollies, the aim was to make the brand as iconic as the lolly.'The packaging had evolved to look like every other lolly brand in the freezer,” says Springetts. “Everyone recognises a Fab and the packaging should be no different. We discovered that outside of Fab everyone was using the trio of colours far more iconically than the brand themselves.”They delved in to the history of Fab as a brand, but they didn't just want the brand to be about nostalgia.  They reconnected the brand back to the lolly itself, it was based on the idea of 'Fab at Fifty'.
























Ach

This gorgeous packaging for Ach, a Lithuanian vegan chocolate brand has our eyes completely captivated. The chocolate bars are adorned with organic swirls and are complete with gold foiling accents. The typography is what makes this chocolate packaging truly stunning. "Vegan chocolate 'Ach' is a Lithuanian brand. A limited edition was launched for Christmas - the most beautiful holiday of the year. The chocolate is enchanting and rich complete with almonds and pollen. The main goal of these packages is to convey the winter and holiday spirit. This is achieved using gold foil, typographical and graphical elements which takes you to the spirit of the sparkling holidays!

Nib Mor

NibMor had some choice dark chocolate on their hands but what they craved was a cohesive brand message that expressed their healthy point of difference.

Our Strategy team repositioned the brand as chocolate with substance – fulfilling on personal, social and environmental levels.

Pearlfisher Design used the versatility of an illustrated hand to bring the brand’s vibrant personality to life. The result was a whole new visual and verbal language for chocolate that breaks traditional category codes.

Reval Chocolate is an Estonian chocolate brand that takes an contemporary grip on classic chocolate truffles. With great packaging, beautiful truffles with fun and exciting flavors they are bound for success.

Reval Chocolate comes in six different boxes each with a different theme, this theme is also used in the packaging which comes with its own color and a symbol which will represent the flavor profile in each box.

For example the box of spicy truffles comes in red and with the shape of a chili fruit, the name of the box is “With a sharp tongue”, the flavors represented in the box are pepper, chili, ginger to name a few. Each box is filled with nine different truffles that is just as beautiful as the design of the box.

AD Angels are the name of the Estonian agency that has created the packaging for Reval Chocolate. Reval Chocolate are sold mainly in Estonia but hopefully it will spread to somewhere near you, until then we kindly ask Reval to ship over a few pounds of chocolate, you know, for tasting…

The six themes of the chocolate boxes are

ALWAYS IN LOVE / More euphoria than one can take / classic truffles

WITH A SHARP TONGUE / The world belongs to the brave / spicy truffles

SLIGHT BUZZ / It keeps becoming more and more beautiful / alcohol truffles

SINFULLY SWEET / You are always forgiven / berry and fruit truffles

O HOLY NIGHT / The sweetest time of the year / truffles with a Christmas feeling

YOU ARE SO CUTE / I’d give all the flowers to you / truffles for your Valentine”

Packaging Design Tips - Design Bridge, 99 Designs, The Dieline

The 4 principles of an effective packaging design:

It can be seen on shelf (impact)

It engages shoppers (relevance)

It communicates key messages and/or a point-of-difference (advantage)

It sells (conviction)

It starts with the very first conversation with the client, where the brief is fleshed out (or challenged) and we don’t just agree that we “need a new design” but we agree what the design needs to do, and what the right answer will look like.

By demonstrating that we understand their business and market, we can demonstrate our ability to translate their business and marketing objectives into consumer drivers and clear design objectives, the foundation for measurement.

Top tips for effective packaging design

Begin with the first client conversation to determine clear objectives before you start, and follow up beyond design delivery to track performance and results

Establish which measures work with your objectives: sales, listings, units, revenue, margin, engagement

Be creative about determining the impact of design. Look for reduced PR or online / marketing activity and pre-campaign shelf sales

Next time you go to a supermarket, pick a random shelf and browse through some products. Glance at each and ask yourself two very simple questions:

What’s this product for?
What’s the brand behind it?

- Clarity and Simplicity
- Honesty
- Authenticity
-  Shelf Impact
-  Extensibiity
-  Practicality

Packaging design is a large and demanding design field always looking for designers who can deliver both product originality and sales performance. Packaging is the last message a consumer sees and a last chance to convince him to buy the product. Clarity, honesty, authenticity and other rules described above play an important rule in this process but are by no means the final word on the subject.

VISUAL DESIGN TRENDS: IDEALISM INVERTED

When analyzing the trends present across the increasingly dynamic design landscape, there was one unifying idea. Despite the diversity of styles exhibited, the different messages and slogans, and the variety of products, they were all connected by a similar philosophy. As each movement rebels against the one that came before it, we gain an understanding of what fuels these trends. We also learn more about our culture and the spirit of the time as it is expressed by some of our most important visual communicators—packaging designers. 

1. Nature

2. The Past

3. Less

4. Innocence

5. Identity

SHOPPING TRENDS: SHOPPING FOR ANSWERS

Driving many of the visual trends is a series of shifts in consumer taste, how consumers shop, and what they are truly shopping for. The visual trends seek to meet consumers where they are, to speak their language, to understand their desires, and position their product as the solution to these as yet unmet needs. As brands continue to play larger, more intimate roles in our lives, the way we think about shopping changes. 

1. Purpose

2. Peace

3. Consumer-Centric

4. Experience

5. Uniqueness

6. Personalization

7. Brand-Centric Extensions

8. Social Connection

Packaging Trends for 2017

Active and Intelligent Packaging

Consumers are drawn to packaging that is interactive. Take for instance packaging for food and beverages: consumers are more likely to choose products with clear or see-through packaging because it allows them to view the product before buying it. In terms of intelligent packaging, it was only a matter of time before that became a real thing. 

Reliable and Environmentally friendly packaging

Concern for the environment is becoming a priority not just for consumers but by governments in countries all over the world as well. Eco-friendly packaging doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be made of recyclable or bio-degradable materials, it could also mean that package is reusable for the customer.

Packaging for online products

Many online retailers are falling short when it comes to providing their consumers with an engaging packaging experience. As more and more brands are shifting to online platforms and away from physical store locations, the need to impress consumers with packaging for online products is becoming more and more important.