As I set myself a very short time-scale for this brief, mockups of the final packaging bars were made in Photoshop, as opposed to being physically made. The mockup style taken really needed to be considered, as low-quality, unrealistic mockups would not suit the required luxury aesthetic set in the brief. Rather than getting feedback on the designs themselves, I took 3 unpopular entries that have already been submitted to this brief, as well as 3 of the most popular entries, and asked a crit group to give me feedback on which they think is more luxurious/why the bottom 3 submissions are more popular.
The feedback was very clear. People firstly highlighted how the unpopular mockups do not look realistic, as the perspective and backgrounds used are very digital and do not create the aesthetic that the bar is physically in an environment. Further feedback given highlighted that the popular designs use single colour backgrounds, which puts more of a focus on the bar designs than their surroundings. Overall, people most preferred the bottom left entry, as the subtle background gradient and drop shadows used create the illusion of depth and three-dimension - making the mockup look very realistic. People suggested that I keep my mockups as simple as possible, with just one background colour. Furthermore, it was suggested that I should use shadows, highlights and lighting effects in Photoshop to make the mockups appear as realistic as possible.
Further research was made into luxurious bars. Below are some examples found on Behance. Whilst these are bars that have been physically made, they are all very similar to the popular entries, in terms of the aspects highlighted in the crit.
Informed by this feedback I researched into some downloadable mockups online. Whilst I could have photographed my own mockups, it was much less time-consuming to buy already-made Photoshop mockup which have included shadow, highlight and light layers. The most professional, luxurious looking mockup that I could find can be seen below to the right. This cost just £10, and includes a variety of real paper backgrounds, lighting effects and angle variations.
In terms of producing the mockups, designs were simply imported into clipping masks, which were included in the Photoshop files. This quickly and accurately placed my designs, made in the digital development stage, onto the bars. A grey background was used for all the mockups to keep consistency and simplicity across all the outcomes produced. Some further Photoshop work had to be done in the respect of aesthetically showing different stocks/finished; however, use of the clipping masks made this very simple to achieve. Whilst the production timescale of creating mockups was very quick, a lot of time in this part of the project was spent on actually finding the right mockups to use - there are a huge range available online, therefore it was challenging to find a suitable one to use. The outcomes produced can be seen in the following blog post.
No comments:
Post a Comment