This was a fun and highly engaging project.

Design Approach

The purpose of my company, New Beginning, is to raise money for World Hunger. I designed the bag keeping in mind that it was for a charity event. I chose to use a dandelion because I feel the image matches really well with my concept and the idea of charity. The seed drifting off of the dandelion represents the donations and the new life that is planted with the donations. To make the message clear to the person holding the bag, I included “Your Contribution is the Seed to a new life” to let them know that their donations is used to help improve lives of others malnourished children. As for the fonts used, I used Couture and Helvetica. When thinking of marketing to corporate administrators, I tried to make the gift bag feel a little more luxurious. After studying a lot of luxury brands I decided to use Couture because it gave an elegant and simple feel to the brand. I ended using a 1color model because I feel black is a great way to portray this cause because it kind of gives off a feeling of melancholy yet also an elegance to the whole bag. Unfortunately, I was not able to get hold of gloss paper and I really regret it, I feel a glossy paper will make the gift bag even more appealing to look at.

What I Learned

I really enjoyed this project because it was more of crafting and putting something together by hand. From this project I learned more about the importance of detail. Each detail of a product has its voice and as the designer is it our job that it can be clearly heard and the message is clear. Overall, I am satisfied that we had such an awesome project as our final project for this semester.

Typefaces used

Couture

Helvetica

DESIGN APPROACH

Though the organization I chose to design a gift bag for caters to the youth, I knew the gift bag itself had to appeal to a more mature, affluent audience. Keeping this in mind, I still wanted the bag to be playful and light while conveying a serious message. Because of this, I chose to keep the subjects on the bag faceless. Instead, I gave them all “stars” as heads, implying that they are all stars, and the “Sky’s The Limit.” I have all of the subjects looking up at the sky in order to strengthen the message. As for the bad filler, I chose to use admission tickets, which directly suggests that by purchasing the bag you’re making it possible for a child to put on a show.

COLOR

I decided to use a 2-color model while designing the bag to maintain a clean design, and keep the printing cost down. For the stars I chose Pantone 803C, as it wasn’t too bright or too dull. I used “K” (black” for the subjects, but chose to add a gradation to symbolize the light from the star in the sky shining down on them and brightening up their path to success.

TYPEFACE

The font I used is titled “IMPACT.” I chose this font because it’s bold and grabs your attention, saying: “you have to read me.” It’s also a strong font, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for, strong supporters to help lift our youth up.

WHAT I LEARNED

I learned that there’s a message in every detail, from the design itself to the material you choose to use as handles. I also learned that cutting, especially die cutting, takes time, and is a skill to be mastered with time.

The organization I chose to design for was 826National. ‘826’ has locations all over the country, all dedicated to helping children ages 6-18 to learn to write. One of the main things they strive for at ‘826’, is to inspire and help the children be creative in their writing. They do this by building creative environments, such as designing one of their locations as a superhero store. I wanted to achieve something similar with my design for my gift bag. In order to fully understand where I would begin with this approach, I needed to know who I would be selling this bag to. I decided to create this bag for teachers and parents, especially the parents of children who have difficulty with their writing.

My design began with a pencil. I wanted the bag to have a certain look and the correct message to match. My first idea was by wrapping the bag with a notebook paper template that I found online and then have a small image of a pencil. I realized however, that the message that I wanted to convey was not coming through. So I created the bag in a CMYK color model, using a die cut to present a pencil shape on the front and back of the bag with both side panels as the lined paper. I went through many variations of this design with different types of font, but was not able to find one that matched my theme. I decided to design my own type face and wrote a continuous message on both sides of the bag. I also used the same idea for the tag and the objects inside.

I learned a lot from this project. It helped me to experiment with many different ideas as well as learning that the final design can come from the hundreds before it. I also learned about new techniques on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, such as how to alter image sizes and their dpi and how to create image tracings of an image.

Meghan Sharp

For my gift bag project, I decided to focus on Global Climate change and how it is effected the Polar Ice Caps. The change in temperature has been drastically melting the Polar Ice Caps away, Polar bears and other wildlife are losing their homes. According to the U.S. Geological Survey they are predicting that two thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050. So for this project I though it would be a great idea to focus on the Polar Bears.

For my design approach in the beginning, I really wanted to create a hand drawn cartoon like picture of a happy polar bear and a sad polar bear. After playing around with my design for weeks I realize that the design was not going to work out, and I needed to step away from it and try something new. I decided to use a full color image of a single polar bear, standing on ice that was melting away. I thought it was best to have the image wrapped around the entire bag  because you are able to see how much of the ice caps are melting. I then decided to make the type really large and bold on the other side of the polar bear, to really grab the client’s attention and wanting to help people want to start making a change.

The typeface I used was: Helvetica Neue Condensed Black.

I thought this was the best typeface to really grab the attention and to make a stand against global climate change.

I decided to do gift bag for non- profit organization Charity: Water. Charity: water is organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. The organization has helped fund 13,641 projects, benefiting over 4.6 million people.

My concept was to create charity bag that will show the devastating statistic of how many children suffering from the need of clean water. I wanted to make the bag unique, distinctive and personal.

Both sides of the gift bag have the same statistic but with different numbers: one side says “every 60 second one child dies from water related diseases” and the other side says that “ 4,500 kids will die today from water related diseases”. On both sides of the bag, I have logo that created for this organization. It says water charity, and instead of A in word water I did white water drop. I think this makes the logo memorable and eye-catching.

On the bottom of a bag it says: WATER IS LIFE and shows the statistic that nearly every 5^th child is affected by water problem.

For this project I used only one typeface Gill Sans, but I play with weight and color of typeface to make it more eye-catching and put accent on a words that I needed to be more distinguished. I tried to stay simple even though I used 4-color model for this bag, my bag doesn’t have many different colors in it.

With my design of this gift bag I wanted to send message to people who will buy it, that YOU can help people and children in need of clear water.

From this project, I learned that when you designing a gift bag, something so complex and interesting, you need to take into consideration many factors. You should have visual of the whole bag as one piece and make it work. It’s good to print out and put together as many test bags as possible, because it will show you what you need to be changed.