Practical - interim crit

At this point I had a peer crit where I showed the developments I had done so far and asked what direction I should take the design of the sleeve in.

Feedback

Feedback was helpful and gave me a direction to continue on the design. One thing mentioned was my use of photography within the development (see below). Kat thought the use of photography was good but not necessarily within this context. She gave me the idea to use it as a primary feature within other parts of my packaging - for example, I could include vouchers or leaflet promoting my brand and the rest of the range within the box - using photos as the selling point. I liked this idea as it provides me with another output on the project as well as makes the project feel more like a brand.

One question I asked was regarding the outward facing section of the sleeve - that is 

placed on the height of the box at the front. In initial experiments (see below) I had included the name of the meal alongside the photograph, and then continued on to instead list the ingredients included in the meal. Feedback I got from this was that this made the sleeve too busy and crowded. As the ingredients will need to be listed on the back anyway, advice was to revert back to the original design and instead use a symbol such as an arrow to instruct the consumer to look at the back to see ingredients.

Another question I asked about was the use of texture within the design (see below), as I had just experimented with it and was unsure. Advice on this element was to experiment with types of paper to get the textured look instead of digitally as it can look naff. If I can I will look at the types of paper offered in the print room to see if I can recreate this look properly.

Good feedback included the use of colours - coding for meat, fish and vegetarian meals is a good method to indicate type of meal at first glance. Kat liked the use of bright colours in my initial experiments (see below), but I want to experiment with pale colours as well to see which direction I want to head in.

The other good feedback was that the handpainted type works really well to suit the handmade feel aesthetic I was aiming for. This was great as I really like it in place on the boxes too - one comment was that I could smooth out the edges of the type more, however I did show the printed test piece and was assured it looked fine. To continue this onward to create a deeper project I could create an alphabet from this hand lettering, but this would only be to implement in a portfolio, or if I was to expand the range. Another option could be to laser cut type if the meal was packaged as a ready meal - with the contents encased within a transparent film but as the packaging is a cardboard box and the use of colour is a primary feature within the design, this is a route I didn't want to explore.

Other than the above comments, I just need to create a logo and deeper brand for the range of meals - something to reflect the ethos of fresh food.