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.

The theme for my gift bag is to have a donation for the dogs and cats that will kill in the shelter. Every day, more than 9,000 healthy and treatable dogs and cats are killed in America’s shelters. But every day, there’s something all of us can do to help save those animals. To buy this bag is to help to end the killing of the dogs and the cats that are killed in America’s animal shelters every day.

For my gift bag, I choose the organization that called “Save Them All Best Friends”. This organization is to have a donation and help the cats and dogs that are in the shelters. Because of the shelters are for cats and dogs, I used silhouette of cat and dog. And I tried to make them crying because they want help. I put the footmarks, fish and bone for underline. I want to emphasize fish for cat and bones for dog. Because of it, I used both for gift tag too. And because of the dogs and cats are need help, I put “HELP US” on both side of bag. For the inside and the string, because of my design of bag is almost black and white, I used white tissue and black string. And for my bag, I used color black, dark blue, and light blue.

From the experiment of to make this gift bag, I learned it is better for symmetry on opposite side of gift bag. For my bag, first I put the word “HELP US” only one side. But latest one, I put this word both side. I feel it better than before. And for gift tag, it should be understandable. First, I tried to make it as a bone and put the mark of fish on it. But the fish is too small. I think it was difficult to get that emphasize both cat and dog. So, I changed it and to make bone and fish are equal size.

Typeface used: Sabon LT Std (Bold and Roman)

The theme of my gift bag is to improve someone’s vision with a pair of Warby Parker glasses. This eyewear brand has partnered with the Vision Spring Organization to help people with eye problems in the developing world. Every time somebody purchases a pair of Warby Parker eyeglasses, one pair will be given to a person in need. My tagline is: Kind Eyes.

Design Approach

Considering the fact that his company creates inexpensive, but stylish eyewear, I wanted to design a bag with a modern, edgier look that would appeal to my main target audiences: urban sophisticates and young professionals.

I’ve tried to have a concise message since I wanted to have a lot of negative space on the bag, allowing it to blend in harmoniously with the die-cuts. As typefaces, I used only ScalaSans with two variations: regular and bold. The 1 color model was used throughout my design.

From the beginning of my sketching process, I wanted to focus on die-cuts as the major design elements. Cutting the die-cuts in the shape of eyeglasses was extremely challenging. Also, visualizing the folding and the putting of all the parts together was a long, interesting mind puzzle. To create the illusion of clear lenses, I used laminating sheets and plastic around the die-cuts and for my handles. I also wrapped the tagline in that transparent material.

I’ve definitely learned a lot from doing this project. I have a better understanding of how a 3D design should be placed on a page in Indesign, using bleeds and crop marks as indicators of what should be printed and what should be cut after printing. What you see on the screen is slightly different from what gets forwarded to the printing press. I’ve always had some difficulties trying to visualize something that needs to be cut and folded, so I’m glad that I had to do this project.

My gift bag is conceptualized by the ideals of a non-profit organization called Art Start. Their mission is to foster the lives of underprivileged youth and children that are mostly at-risk by giving them the opportunity to pursue a talent in the arts through workshops and artist’s residence. I specifically chose my gift bag to focus on the music side of the organization. The target that I would have to sell my bags to would be people who have interests in the arts as well as getting the youth out of the streets and jail by giving them the opportunity to pursue their true talents. The demographic of my target would preferably be people who live in cities, have an above average to high income, ages 30 years and above, and are art & culture enthusiasts.

My concept included emphasizing the idea of violence but sticking to the subtle and harmonious characters of music. Therefore, the color scheme that I chose was black, white and red. The gift bag on a whole is a 2-color model process. The images are grayscale (double exposure) and one single red color. The font colors are all paper white.

The sides of the bag with the music notes are red to emphasize the idea of violence as bold and loud. While the front and back is just white to convey the true essence of music. The tagline is straightforward and portrays my cause well “Music over violence”.

The reason I chose to sticking to a conventional shaped tag is because  It compliments the elements of the bag well as well as the layout of the tagline. The material I used for headphones is a flat metal painted over with black to match the image. The tissue paper I used was red again to convey the notion of violence and the little strips of music papers in the bag makes the tagline literal.  It took me 2 prototypes on regular thin tabloid paper to come to my conclusion on the design and took 1 prototype on the good paper to finalize the printing process and colors in relation to what it looked like on the computer. The paper I used was a 67 lb hard stock presentation paper from Staples. This fit well with my design concept and takes the weight of the metal pieces used as handles.

Overall the biggest thing I learnt from this project was to understand how to differentiate the colors that I see on the screen versus when printing on different types of papers, which is important in production. But It also helped me settle on what materials best go with the final print.