Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Packaging
By package design, I don't mean the design of the physical construction of the packaging. Rather, I mean the design of the graphic elements on the packaging. I've had the pleasure to work on quite a few projects of this nature, including the above packaging for Legends edition of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards. This packaging required 8 different color schemes, 3 of which you see here. It also required lots of illustration and photo composite work.
CD packaging can be a very fun challenge. I designed the packaging elements of this music CD for Northridge Church's collection of worship music titled Vertical Worship.
I've enjoyed having the opportunity to design quite a few themes for Perry's line of ice cream products. Panda Paws is their number 2 selling flavor (just behind vanilla). I designed the front panel of this ice cream package, directed the photo shoot, and illustrated the background in watercolor. Since ice cream melts under the hot lights of a photo shoot, a food stylist is hired to create something that looks like ice cream but doesn't melt. All of the food stylists I've worked with have their own unique recipes for fake ice cream...but I don't think any of it is edible.
Thankfully, Monkey Mania didn't require photo direction. Imagine trying to photo-direct three monkeys eating ice cream! I did design and execute the illustration (using Macromedia Freehand and Adobe PhotoShop).
I love chocolate, coffee AND ice cream so designing for this flavor was a pleasure. No illustration required for this one but there was a great deal of photo composite work. I believe there were 5 different photo elements to be combined here.
I won an award for the design of the packaging for Perry's line of novelty products. At the time I believe there were 9 different products in this line (now there are more).
One of the greatest perks of working on retail packaging is that the grocery store or retail outlet becomes your art gallery! It is so fun to walk into the grocery store and see your work on their shelves. And at family gatherings, when someone breaks out the Panda Paws ice cream I get to hear my wife say for the one thousandth time "Hey, my husband designed that!" I never get tired of hearing her say it!
