The challenge was to create packaging for a drink can that used the color red, incorporated Indian themes, and mango flavor with a maximalist (horror vacui) artistic style.
I went to the store and looked at existing energy drink products. I took some photos of them. I also went on line and collected a few inspirational photos to create a quick and dirty mood board.
I worked on sketching some patterns as well as a few mangoes to get a feel for the product.
I used Adobe Capture to bring in some of my sketches into Illustrator. I then refined and experimented with them, creating a variety of custom brushes.
Red was required as part of the challenge. Since mango was the other part of the challenge i felt it was appropriate take the colors for the can from the mango itself. I chose to make them very bright as compared to the mango to emphasize the “Energy” part of energy drink.
Conceptually, I wanted to get away from the idea that a brand always has to have a name. I chose Impact Regular as my base font to work from and I created these three rectangles as a mark and replacement for the "E". The "E" represents the "E" in energy and can represent the brand by being incorporated into almost every color. I believe that a brand can be successful with a mark alone. I was inspired both by the font and the equality bumper sticker. The sticker is bold, simple, yet recognizable.
For the flavor font I chose Cortado Regular because it has a more erratic nature to it. It represents how the energy effects you and it pairs well with the more rigid Impact, similar to a before and after for when you drink it.
Before incorporating the motifs from the pattern brushes, I experimented with different tileable patterns I made to mock up the placement of the text. I started up with my chosen color pallet, then kept two colors and added blue for the next pattern. For the third pattern I kept the green and blue and added black. I ended up really enjoying the results on the alternate cans.
Using my square patterns I mocked up the text locations.
For the final piece I applied the brushes to circles to create a mandala-like effect.
I also made an additional blue and yellow version for fun. I wanted to experiment with different ways of using the motifs.
