MerryDay Goes to School : Gift (pouch design)

Two more posts plus an extra one about Make Art That Sells Class. I wish I could be more disciplined in both writing and reading other lovely blogs. But here I am trying as best I can...

Make Art That Sells class's last week is about Gift. Everyone in the class has his or her own favorite topic they had expected to learn more. Most of them including me said it's children book week we eagerly waited. It was a fun and challenging week but after class ended, I found that the Gift week is related to what I have always wanted to do most.

My MerryDay on etsy is focusing on stationery design and illustration items which can be produced at home by myself as I want to start it small first. But I have always imagined it in my head that, in the future, I would have a range of various kind of products--coffee mugs, tote bags,  pouches... anything in gift shops.  This class helps direct me to focus on what to do to reach that goal :)

We had done pattern, plate design, children's book, wall art and in this Gift week, we got to do a pouch.  As usual, we started with a mini exercise first : to gather things you love to collect.

Most students had large collections of various kinds of things, buttons, miniature dolls, stones, stamps etc. As for me, I don't collect anything seriously except children's picture books which I have started collecting recently. I have also just moved from my parent's big house to live with my husband in a small apartment. So, I had really limited collection here.







The reason Lilla wanted us to collect things as much as possible was that we had to do a hyper-lush pouch for the main assignment.  I heard the word hyper-lush for the first time but it didn't take me long to picture how the pouch would be with such style as Lilla had tons of examples to show us.  If you wonder what exactly is the 'hyper-lush' style, you can get a general idea from these google images.

Basically, the style involves around vivid colors, a lot of large and small flowers or photo objects overlapped or crammed in. This was quite a challenge for me as I usually work in simple graphic style and when there's too much going on I tend to lose my grip on overall design. Lilla said we didn't need to do the hyper-lush, she just showed us the current trend in fashion which could be done in gift product line too. I was quite sure that I couldn't do it but it never hurt to try :) So I started by sketching things from my little collection.



I tried doing photo collage and failed so I went back to something I was more familiar with, digital illustration. I still want to have a look of the hyper-lush with my own illustration style and here is my initial pencil sketch of the pouch.


I found that it was much easier to do the digital work when I had the pencil sketch. The sketch was quite complete and I could imagine how it would turn out so I didn't have problem to visualize it into this digital form.



Before I started this drawing, the idea of this color palette, mint, magenta and taupe, suddenly came to me when I saw a mini-cooper car in cute mint color drove pass me one day and I thought 'oh, I'm going to have a mint pouch!' and magenta and taupe sort of come along after that. You have to love the moment when inspiring things happen while you are doing something else :)

Above is the hyper-lush pouch in my style. I tried imagining this design in various kind of products and it's very exciting to see that there are so many possibilities from only one theme, one design!

So, this is the end of the Make Art That Sells class part A. I'm going to join in part B this October. I still feel the energy and inspirations going on in me and I think I have more focus on my goal too. I will wrap it up about how I feel and what I have learned from this class in the next post.

Thanks for coming and have a merry day :D