Creative Juices

Lindsay Wright, Professional Intern/Goofball

As you may know I just started a very big internship about 2 weeks ago, which explains my ghostly silence on this new blog. As an art direction intern, my first assignment was to create a "self-promo" to hand out to all the creative group heads. It gives them my extension for my phone so they can give me a call and bring me onto their projects when they need some extra hands on deck. I wanted to create something that showed them I'm not just a designer, but a conceptual thinker. But I also wanted it to be cute, to make them laugh a little. I'm a sucker for cheesy little things, and I thought that maybe if it was silly it could show that I don't take myself too seriously.

Snapple (left) and Odwalla (right)

So after going through a lot of way too cheesy and a lot of horrible ideas I finally came up with "Creative Juices." Everyone knows the saying "get your creative juices flowing," so why not play on this phrase and hand out creative juices. First decision was finding the right juice. I originally pictures something like Naked Juice or Odwalla, but realized that these would have to be kept in a fridge. In the fridge means out of sight and out of sight is out of mind, so that idea was thrown out. I tried Fuze, but it was difficult to design a label that would fit nicely on their strangely shaped bottles. I landed on Snapple. Yes, they mostly make teas, but they are fruit teas and they do have some juices. They also were a great size for labels that gave the design some more space.

Next came the time to think about logistics. I needed these labels to have the right design, right paper, and flawless cut. I should be playful, but not look like a children's craft-time project. So I went above and beyond and bought myself a fancy little paper cutter. It would have been $75 but it happened to be 50% off. Also, Jo-Anns app has an abundance of seriously awesome coupons so I would strongly suggest downloading it! At STAPLES I decided on the glossy paper because it seemed like it would stand out more and deal better with the juice "sweating" on the bottle if they wanted to put it in the fridge and actually drink it later.

I was so proud of how they turned out! They Strawberry-Kiwi (pink) definitely looked the most beautiful with the label I designed. I loved this little project because one of my dreams for the future is actually to be involved in packaging design and this project taught me so much more about it than I had expected. The only disadvantage was lugging these bad boys around the office and up the stairs while trying to navigate through cubicles to find the desks I was looking for. I looked like a total noob. Luckily a fellow intern took pity on me and helped me to navigate his floor by printing a map for me and highlighting all the places I needed to go. As Morgan would say, he was my "guardian angel intern."

love, lindsay