Clearance Sale: Packaging

Well once again I've been slacking with my hot links blog posts. My excuses are a combination of mac trouble, with temporary loss of all my RSS feeds and being just plain busy. Anyway in preparation for sorting out my all my feeds and bookmarks I thought I'd have a bit of a clearance sale of stuff that slipped through the net. So to kick us off here's some rather good packaging work.

Great Packaging from DesignFriendship for The Kitchen, minimal packaging with some lovely typographic work

Identity and Packaging for Petite France by Peter Hanberger

Unusual approach for Manual Co. packaging from Peter Gregson, his blog/portfolio is well worth a visit.

I love the contrast between the packaging and contents of Campbell Hay's identity and packaging for Lola's Kitchen

Return of the the Living Red is a really smart concept from M/A/S/H

Help Remedies packaging offers a refreshingly friendly and simple solution to healthcare packaging

Tank have a great folio of varied work including this set of packaging for Bumble & Bumble

Ateronon Product Introduction Catalogue

One of the most enjoyable projects I have recently completed is a high spec product showcase for Ateronon. The 44 page oversized A4 catalogue features some nice print finishing including, a high gloss cover with red foil blocking and embossing, and semi-transparent lining sheets for the opening and closing pages. The catalogue is screw bound with inside pages printed on a heavy uncoated stock. As this was a short run it was printed digitally but the quality is outstanding. Big shout out to Emmerson Press who we're a pleasure to work with on what was a fairly complex job with a very tight turnaround.

Ateronon Marketing

I've been doing a lot of marketing material lately for the newly launched Ateronon dietary supplement, on behalf of a new client NTI Healthcare. I have been working on marketing materials ranging from Trade Adverts, consumer leaflets, POS units and a high spec product catalogue. The later I will add photos of in a separate post.

Orgasmic Catalogues

Well I've gone snap happy again today in preparation for a long overdue update to my main portfolio website. Got some great new projects to add as well as some glowing testimonials from some new clients. Here's the first post today with some photos of the Orgasmic catalogues I recently designed. The business is really taking off for my client and some more promotional material is on the horizon.

MIS Branding

One of my recent projects has been the branding of Marine Information Systems. The company provides web-based data storage and processing systems to members of the oil industry and those involved in its shipment.

The branding was required to sit at ease with the traditional corporate nature of the client base, along with providing a reference to the oil shipping industry.

After exploring a number of initial routes I developed an identity based around the icon of a moving propeller to reference both sea shipment and with subtle connotations to power and a driving force.

The icon and a marine inspired colour palette were also applied as key elements to the companies core business stationery.

Catch Up

Well it's been a manic month for me, probably the busiest of my freelance career so far. I've been working on a variety of projects including a vast array of marketing material for the newly launched Ateronon dietary supplement, in house work again for Global Radio and the branding of a new specialist IT company serving members of the Oil Industry.

Not as welcome this month has been some IT issues with my mac which has had me pulling my hair out on several occasions. Touch wood all is running fine at the moment thanks to Time Machine transporting my Mac back to a couple of weeks ago, before I had any issues. Really is a great feature that I'd not had to put to the test until now and once I'd figured out how to do it was really straight forward.

The problem was with my OS crashing and after hours of tinkering, a couple of visits to the Apple store, and a failed archive & re-install I found this article for restoring using time machine on Duncan Davidson's blog. Really simple when you know how so thanks to Duncan for the step by step guide, really makes you appreciate what the bloggasphere can do when the sh*t hits the fan.

The only issue was having to rescue the two weeks worth of work I'd done since the restore date. Whilst you can use time machine to jump forward and pick them up individually I'd saved the files (and emails) I'd been working on on a separate hard drive and simply dragged them back over when I was done.

Anyway shall be posting some pics of what I've been working on in the next week or so when I get stuff back from the printers, so keep 'em peeled.

Hot Links from June

Bit of a bumper Links post this month as I've come across a fair few quality resource and inspiration sites of late, so here goes;

You can never have access to enough textures, especially if you want to rough up too polished looking vectors, so texture lovers is worth bookmarking

If you're into creating T-Shirt graphics then this round up of free blank Vector and Bitmap Tees from the ever reliable Spoon Graphics will come in handy

Simon Schubert's images made from simply creasing white paper are great, simple idea but I bet they are a nightmare to make

AlexandFelix series of 13 Queens images are remarkable as no computer post production was used, all painstakingly arranged and lit in the studio.

Greek Mouse Graphics have a great portfolio, especially loving their extensive packaging work, clean and often witty

Studio On Fires LetterPress blog will have you stroking the screen hoping to cop a feel

Just-My-Type is a side project of designer Jakob Nylund and he's kind enough to provide free .AI files of some beautiful display typefaces

A lot of television idents have got pretty impressive of late and The Ident Gallary brings together the best in one nifty site with stills and videos from mainly UK favorites

Blogged about this site before but it's finally fully live. HypeforType have some cracking exclusive typefaces from cutting edge designers as affordable prices, nice

Dzine is a very useful blog for inpiration and this selection of Flash 3D environments provides interesting viewing

Another round up from Dzine with packaging design. I do love the new Diesel bottle, it's the sort of idea most companies would veto at the first round for being to costly, un-practical

Lovely Package does exactly what it says on the tin/ carton/ box, a very nice blog giving big pictures of stylish packaging

The Design Inspiration site has a nice round up of some experimental typography