Innovation

Packaging - Latest Product Images

2009-08-26T12:10:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a while and I'd like to start using this thing again. I guess I will start with these:

Project 2 - Thumbnails

2009-03-15T22:18:00.001-07:00

Here are some potential logos I have created out of some sketches I made:

Project 1 - Final Revision

2009-02-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

So here is the die cut I made of what the box will finally look like:

Aaaaand time to actually put it all together...

Project 1 - Additional design

2009-02-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

I decided to go on and make a gift set for my product which consists of a box for the bottle and a specialized shot glass. Here it is:

Now to actually get all this stuff together...

Project 1 - Continued

2009-02-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

I decided to continue my project a bit further on and came up with a shot glass design for my product. I'm thinking of making a type of gift set for the product, as in the bottle and the shot glass in a special box which I will try to create later. For now, I'm just working on the glass:

The bottom portion is the actual design that would wrap around the glass, so the two ends of the stripes will meet together and make up the Stolichnaya portion of the back design. Also, I'm thinking of placing the Stoli logo on the bottom of the shot glass to repeat the name brand. And what better way to show your brand name than when a person take a shot?

Project 1 - Finalized

2009-02-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

I went ahead and completed the rest of the bottle design.

Here is what the entire design is comprised of:

So this is the actual print where the front of the label meets with the back of the label on a clear print. I slapped the cap label in there just to conserve room, so it's not really supposed to be there.

Also with that, here is the complete bottle:

And finally, a close up of the back label:

Personal Project Revised

2009-02-17T22:21:00.000-08:00

Behold the awesome power of ninjas!

I added some cool touches to the shirt, like a tribal pattern beneath the ninjas to make them pop a bit more and some shurikens on the back. Gotta finish up those pirates.

Personal Project

2009-02-14T14:39:00.001-08:00

This is something I've been working on for some time now. It's a t-shirt design... with NINJAS! The next one I'm working on is another t-shirt... except with PIRATES! It'll take me a while though.

Front:

Back:

Project 1 - Revisions

2009-02-14T13:59:00.001-08:00

I was trying to think of a way to unify the entire design into a single functioning piece. What I came up with is a sort of thin filament between the label design and the illustration that goes over the cap. At the same time, I thought of a way to apply an actual function to the thin filament and use it as a way to lift the entire tab over the bottle, with a little arrow on there that would almost say "lift here."

Here is an alternate design for the tab itself.

Emerge

2009-02-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

First off, I confused the actual title of the event with "Emigre." I do that pretty often due to two reasons: I'm totally dyslexic. Wait... that's really the only reason.

Anyway, the show was quite enjoyable. I even managed to drag my older brother with me who is generally not too fond of art because he is a programmer. I came at the very beginning and spent at least two hours walking around the entire place, checking out every single piece. It was a very diverse mix of different types of art styles, ideas and even the actual format of some of the pieces themselves. It was especially heart warming to see works I was already familiar with, that is the works done by my fellow classmates and it compels me to participate the next time the event comes around again.

My first favorite piece was a piece that was on the far right side of the gallery from the entrance. It was the one that covered the topic of our current economic recession. I found it very intriguing due to the way it artistically represented something that almost resembles a chart, with indicators everywhere and even a legend with instructions on how to interpret the information. The illustrations were very helpful and were pretty well done.

The second piece I liked the most was Helen's piece on Darfur. For me, it was not only because I found the idea to be very clever, but it's also the fact that a subject like Darfur is very difficult to cover - let alone send the message across and actually get people to listen.

It was definitely worth going there and I plan on attending shows of that kind more often from now on.

Project 1 - Roughs

2009-02-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

It took me a while to figure out which styles I wanted to try according to my thumbnails, but I ended up with three possible ones:

On my first set, I was going for a very subtle approach with the classic use of the label still the main focus of the bottle. To do that, I decided to abbreviate Stolichnaya to simply "Stoli" and added the correspondent name of the flavor beside it.

My second set is more of an approach towards instant clarification, where upon first view of the bottle you see the main logo and understand what product it is.

My last set is an attempt to unify the entire design all around the bottle into a single, functioning piece and in a vertical manner. The idea is that the design itself literally points to the top of the bottle.

Project 1 - Thumbnails

2009-02-03T08:31:00.001-08:00

And here they are:

Packaging at its finest.... or not

2009-01-26T21:12:00.001-08:00

I'm going to go ahead and get the bad ones out of the way first, so we can look at the good ones afterward and feel much better!

Anyways, here goes:

Undesirable:

Exhibit A: "Creme de Pirouline", assorted flavored tube-like waver things. I found these to be particularly disappointing due to a single, outstanding trait: the shot of the product is done incredibly well, yet everything else seems to stand out so much that it fights with the wonderful photo - thus making the packaging design not-too successful. There is too much going on in the type, where all the colors are different from one another. It almost seems as though the main logo should be in the same format as "Vanille".

Exhibit B: "Pirate's *Booty* With Aged White Cheddar YES Puffed Rice and Corn ALL NATURAL Good for you! CRUNCHY...." well, you get the picture. At a first glance, the general appeal of this product is a big let-down. First off all, you can't be too sure whether it's some sort of potato chips, pop corn or pirate linguistics training manual. So, in other words, you don't really know what's in there, and if you can't figure that out at a first glance..... well, then - you simply don't care. Second of all, I think the name could have been shortened a tad. With so many little thought bubbles and random utterances all over the package, you don't even know what the product is called. And last, pirates aren't even that cool anyway. It's all about ninjas. But, pirates are cool too. Just not as cool.

Exhibit C: "Orangel Liqueur" This product was a bit of a surprise for me. It looked great at first, and was definitely very appealing... until I took a close look at it. I think the easiest way to describe this design would be to say that it's too busy, but at the same time - it still has several qualities that could stand out on their own. So to sum it all up, I think all this design needs is a simple trim on some of its features, and it would just dandy. I mean, come on - who hasn't seen those sun rays behind the peeled orange before? And they really insist on reminding us that this drink is orange-flavored... though the name of the product already spells it out for us, as does the liquid itself. They could use an accent color of some sort, because quite frankly - that is just way too much orange.

Moving on, here is the good part of packaging. Yay!

Desirable:

Exhibit X: "Rose's Cocktail Infusions", martini mixes of all sorts of wonderful and dashing flavors. I really can't see what I could do to improve this design. Just look at it! It reads from top to bottom, where the design follows a "Here is our logo and name, here is a really nice picture of a martini, and here is the flavor of the product. Done" formula. It is basically very clear and concise and it goes straight to the point. Oh, and did I mention that the back side has a neat'o recipe for making the actual drink? No? Well, then I guess that would be up to you to find out!

Exhibit Y: "Spaten, Premium Beer" If I were a German beer-maker, (and believe me - I'd be one the first chance I get) I think I would make a pretty good job of making a lovely design package for my beer in order to sell it to other countries. Maybe it's because I'm European, maybe it's because I think it's a great-tasting beer. Nonetheless, this package truly fascinates me. Even though it is an extremely simple solution, to repeat the design of the bottle on the packaging, I think the initial design of the bottle label went so great that the company deserves to be lazy. You should go try this one. It does not disappoint. EVAR.

Exhibit Z: "Veev, Acai Spirit" The sheer simplicity of this design is phenomenal. I really can't think of anything else to say. Oh, and sorry I could not take a better photo. The bottle was so big that I could not find a good place to capture its true essence. You know, without the Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada back there. It's not like I'm trying to sell you something. Or am I?

Project 4 - Finals

2008-12-15T11:59:00.001-08:00

I apologize in advance for not making my second idea aware to the class, but are both ideas nonetheless.

Recycling:

Conserving water:

Project 4 - New Idea

2008-12-12T22:59:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I did a whole lot of thinking. To make this idea work, I had to contradict myself completely. I will go with the idea of global warming and support it.

I'm currently compiling together any images I can find of anything that contributes to global warming. I will take those images, and apply my idea of global warming metaphorically with all these contributing factors boiling inside a cooking pot. The only digital piece I would add would probably just be "global warming" in a gaseous form as though it is being derived from the steam of the cooking pot. I will also add a call to action which will most likely be a web site.

Project 4 - Idea

2008-12-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of global warming because of how much of a farce it is - especially when a strong political leader like Al Gore truly believes in something that has been proven to be wrong by thousands of people who are professionally knowledgeable in the subject.

In turn, I thought of a way to make a strong statement against global warming. I'm simply having trouble coming up with a way to make that happen. For now, here is something I have composed.

Project 3 - Final, FINAL designs

2008-11-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

Here they are!

The print ads:

And the storyboard:

Project 3 - Final

2008-11-25T17:44:00.001-08:00

We apologize for being behind, but for now here is a somewhat final poster series design.

And our somewhat final storyboard:

Some of Asher's

2008-11-17T17:59:00.000-08:00

I'm uploading some by Asher as well. Here they are.

Project 3 - Digitals

2008-11-17T12:06:00.000-08:00

Here are the three ads.

And here is a rough of the storyboard.

Project 3 - Thumbnails

2008-11-10T16:45:00.000-08:00

Redifining the Blackberry

2008-11-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

Project 3 - Redefining The Blackberry

History:

The Blackberry started out as a very simple pager service back in 1999 by a company called RIM – Research In Motion, a prominent leader in wireless communication. It commenced with its very first model, the 850, and has evolved all the way up until today with the upcoming 9000. Though cell phones weren’t really that big in 1999, the Blackberry 850 provided a few prominent features (aside from paging) that gave way to the idea of a PDA, some of which included: an organizer, a calendar and even wireless internet. Another very prominent feature that has always been a plus in the Blackberry is the fact that it has a QWERTY keyboard.

The evolution of the Blackberry took its form very quickly during the start of the 21^st century. Many upgrades like twice the amount memory or a much larger screen were rapidly applied to the device due to its increase in popularity in the business world. Soon enough, various capabilities we commonly see today have been added to the device as early as the year 2003. Several models were created for the specific use of Bluetooth features, CDMA compatibility, two-way radio and eventually made Cingular the #1 wireless communication provider in all of the US (right about the time when the company bought AT&T). A few 7000-series Blackberry phones attempted to reduce the bulkiness of the older models through compensation of buttons by reducing the amount of letters to two per button. This gave way to the track ball which replaced the old side scroll wheel and allowed the new model to be applicable to both work and life demographics due to the model’s small size and ease of use. As the Blackberry grew larger in its subscribers (5 million by 2006), newer models were released more often, even if the only difference from the previous model was a single feature such as the addition of Wi-Fi or a camera. Finally, with the Blackberry 8800, the innovations have halted in the last year due to the same features being released repeatedly, only with the attempt of combining them altogether. The 9000 series Blackberry has been long awaited with the promises of certain cool, new features like a slider device, touch-screen capabilities and an angular keyboard. Thought it’s not likely for every single one of those awesome features to go into one phone, it does give us the idea that RIM has some interesting things planned for the future.

Audience:

Our target audience will be two separate identities: one is the corporate/business demographic and the other is the young/life demographic.

Competition:

A tad obvious, but worth the mention as always – the iPhone. A few others include the Motorolla “Q”, the Nokia E90i and the Palm Treo 800. All competitors feature some really impressive looking phones, with similar capabilities, if not better ones.

Strategy:

We intend to tackle the two separate identities in a way that best fits them. The typical business person would usually expect a fairly straightforward pitch, such as simply showcasing the product and listing a few of its strongest features. A younger audience has the tendency to orient their tastes around gaudy and humorous ideas. We intend to combine a clever tagline with somewhat of a mildly sexual theme which we believe will pertain to the younger audience quite well.

Visual Style:

The visual style will depend on the particular demographic involved in the ad/commercial. The business demographic typically involves a person, a statement from the person and the product shown alongside that person. For the young, life-like audience, it takes a bit more creativity such as the use of cool backgrounds, a clever tag-line or a powerful statement.

Project 2 - Site redone

2008-10-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Here are my latest Craigslist makeovers. I decided to go for more of a balanced color scheme where the colors compliment each other. I also went ahead and added the basic search function in each section, except log-in where I do not think it is necessary, and an advanced search tab where appropriate.

Latest Site

2008-10-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

Here are my latest web site comps with all the pages. Sorry about the delay, it took an eternity to upload the files.

Project 2 - Thumbnails

2008-10-13T16:24:00.001-07:00

I have very little experience in web design, especially not in e-commerce web sites, but I gave it a go and chose Craigslist as my site for re-design.

Latest, LATEST posters

2008-10-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

It took me a while to realize that I was in CMYK the entire time. The posters were coming out all strange, but here they are, finally.

Web sites!

2008-10-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

Good web sites:

30 Days of Night

Warning: This web site will creep you out. It features some seriously graphic stuff, and that's the best part of it all. The site itself functions very smoothly. It has a concept with a very nice flow to it and keeps the user engaged constantly. I think that the scrolling to the right aspect is very well done because it makes the user wonder what will happen next. And to be honest, I had no idea what I was supposed to do until the night took over, which was an awesome effect. The design portion of the site is extremely well done with some really interesting technical effects that correspond to the movie dead-on. There is even a cool video game you can play. The navigation is made quite simple: the main menu sticks with you the entire time and interactive areas are marked by a splat of blood, which should be quite apparent to any user at all. Just the design and layout aspects alone are so sick and twisted, it goes without saying that it took some crazy amount of work to come up with such a well-functioning site.

Mp3.com

You can't go wrong with a simple navigation system as in Mp3.com (which is owned by CNET that has other sites like Gamespot or TV.com and are all pretty much identical.) All the things you need are right up there with you at all times like videos, photos and podcasts. There are plenty of databases to search from, with music of all sorts, and a bunch of interesting stuff that would catch the attention of any random newcomer. The layout is made to be user-friendly, with a welcoming black backround that makes it very easy to read and without that much scrolling involved. It's always nice to visit a web site that covers music, and it's even better when many aspects of a good site are present as well.

Bad web sites:

Brill Publications

I have no idea what these people were thinking designing this site... it's just awful. First off, it's extremely unwelcoming for a strange-looking, not to mention sounding, animated face of a guy to be talking to you at a first glance of the site. Riding the lift is fun! You choose the top button for "Roof Garden", and you spend what seems to be an eternity waiting for the stupid lift to get there and you end up seeing something horribly unappealing in the end. The worst part of this site is that it has this tendency to look different at almost every location within it. There is so much more I can say, but I think my eyes have commenced bleeding so I'll stop here.

Havenworks

I'm deeply, sincerely apologetic if you had to see that. And I am ever so sorry if you have gone blind at a first glance of this atrocity. Some questions come to mind about this site: where am I? What is this web site about? Is it trying to damage my eye sight? Is it coming alive and trying to attack me? Perhaps the designer was on PCP when he came up with this... um, thing. It's great how there are like a thousand pages to scroll through in order to actually find something. Most people don't even know about the CTRL+F command to find stuff. But look on the bright side - it often links you to some sites that you can stand looking at for five seconds, like Google or Youtube.

Latest posters

2008-09-29T13:26:00.001-07:00

Also, here are my latest posters.

2008-09-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Here are a few environmentals I have been working on. I'm trying to figure out a few more, so I will have more on the way.

Poster designs

2008-09-22T15:44:00.001-07:00

After much aggravated thought of how best to illustrate the wonderful sights of Hungary, I finally came up with this. It was like a nightmare when I could not get the posters to work properly, and at the same time when Photoshop refused to cooperate with me (ending up in a program crash at about 90% completion) but I prevailed in creating a series of posters that are pretty close to what I was going for.

The idea here is that Hungary during the night time is such a grand and beautiful sight that life literally unfolds in front of your eyes. The posters are meant to be used altogether.

Final logo design

2008-09-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

Here is my latest logo set. Having gone through at least four different fonts, the typeface I finally selected is Helvetica Rounded and I don't think I will change it again. While the typeface itself worked well with the icons, some problems occurred as I enlarged and stroked the lettering. The corners of the letters came out angled and awkward-looking so I literally had to go in there and fix them myself. Anyways, there they are, in their completed form.

Project 1 - Brand Thumbnails

2008-09-15T12:37:00.001-07:00

I apologize for all the scrolling in advance and will try to fix that up soon. The first is a series of a travel poster that is applicable on a bus. The second is a series of posters and the last is a series of postcards.

The general idea was for the piece to follow the elegance I had in my logos. I wanted to explore several different sections of the cities like the countryside, the downtown/architectural area and monumental areas. I wanted to try these elements in varying context and aspect.

Project 1 - Revision

2008-09-14T14:39:00.001-07:00

I went ahead and did some of the modifications I was expecting to do. Though I'm still attempting to hand-write my own, I changed the typeface to a much thinner one that corresponds more with both, the country itself and the way the type contrasts with the thick icons. I also fixed up the icons themselves by making them nice and clean, with more graceful and smoother curves. However, some parts of the icons have some rough and sharp edges, like in Budapest and Pecs. I did this not only to make the icons truly unique from one another, but also to demonstrate that the details the monument itself contains are a significant part of it and are the only way you would be able to compare them from an illustration to the monument in-person . The monument of independence in Budapest is a statue of a woman holding a large leaf. In the Hero's Square monument of Pecs we see Archangel Gabriel and I really wanted to emphasize this by illustrating the feathers and curves on his wings. I still have a bit of work to do.

Project 1 - Thumbnails

2008-09-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Before making any actual compositions, I insisted on establishing a single rule for my logos: the absolute necessary use of Hungarian monuments. Hungary is known as a bit of a party country. It is extremely festive, and by that I mean it is constantly filled with all kinds of flare (music, dancing, gourmet etc.) twenty-four hours a day. But, I wanted to explore a more elegant side of the country as well. Hungary is also very well known for its grand monuments of liberty, millenniums and independence. These are extremely important in the history of of Hungary's culture due to the fact that the country has faced various amounts of oppression from its neighbors.

So, based on those parameters, I decided to compose two sets of thumbnails that focus more on the sophisticated side of Hungary and one set of thumbnails that aims solely towards the playful counterpart of Hungary. I have yet to make the decision on which direction I'd like to go in. Also, just a side note, the city Pecs is pronounced "Pesh".

My first idea was a rather simplified solution. I chose a typeface that best describes elegance and sophistication, so in this case script style. I wanted to emphasize on the icons more than the type itself for the viewer to first have a glimpse of what a piece of the country's culture looks like before actually realizing what the country it was.

My second set is all about sheer legibility. The typeface I selected is very clean, and very stylish. The icons accompany the type to fortify the very essence of Hungary itself. Also, the typeface resembled a bit of the Gothic era, which fits perfectly in this sense due to the fact that Hungary was once part of Austria. The country shares quite a bit of history with the Germans and Dutch, so I thought it would be appropriate to show just a slight hint of it.

In an attempt to go in a completely different direction, I chose a very playful, and at the same time legible, typeface and this time instead of the two logos working side by side - I wanted to explore the boundaries of how the two logos would work when they were literally stuck together. If any of you out there know what a gypsy is, that would be the perfect word to describe what I was going for here considering the fact that Hungary is almost completely oriented around gypsy festivities. So here, I combined the typeface with the icons themselves. Also, the knocked out letter is meant to be the accented letter in how the city should be pronounced, while the red and the green complete the actual colors of the country's flag. This allowed me to represent the four different logos as almost completely independent and unique from one another. I was not too sure whether this would be a bit of an overkill, but I decided that it was not enough and went ahead and added a small star into each one of the icons to tie them a little bit together (since they are quite different from one another).

The icons themselves are meant to be used universally for other designs. In other words, I plan on using them in all sorts of ways like water marks, backgrounds, patterns etc.

And there you have it. I anxiously await any comments in the near future!

Project 1 - Location

2008-09-01T22:08:00.001-07:00

For my location I have chosen to do a brand identity on Hungary. I will focus on its three main cities: Budapest, the capitol of Hungary (it also happens to be my birthplace, but I do not remember a single thing about it); Pecs and Debrecen.

I wish I could go into further detail, but I'm afraid my brain is fried due to my illness. So for the three words to describe the country, I chose the following:

1) Unique
2) Nomadic
3) Life-like

About me

2008-08-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Oleg Vasilyev and I am currently a senior at CSUN. My inspiration for Graphic Design originates from the day I migrated to this country about a dozen years ago. Ever since I laid my hands on all things artistic, particularly sophisticated video games, I naturally developed a strong grasp for the arts. My first semester of basic art classes was a bit of a jump-start for me in terms of becoming familiar with the area of GD. However, I can distinctly recall that my second year of school truly opened up my eyes when I realized that I was capable of producing pieces of art that were very close to being professionally designed. From that moment on, I accepted the fact that I would be a designer for the rest of my life - as I have always wanted to be. I find that flat design like posters, brochures (or multi-page design overall) and advertisements are my greatest strength, especially when they involve typography.

During the last several summers I spent quite a bit of time working with kids (to pay for the bills..) and acquired quite a few interesting skills. I received certifications in some cool things that require quite a bit of responsibility. I am now a certified archer, zip line operator and ropes course runner which includes team-building, belaying and facilitating. With my experience with kids, I do have hopes of one day to have the opportunity to design for their particular demographic. Also, here are a few photos of what I typically did (note: they were not taken by me and certainly not uploaded by me, as you can see, they look like crap):

The first photo has me on the right, supervising a few newcomer co-workers making sure that they carry out a standard procedure before actually sending a person down. We're about 30 feet in the air and if you look closely, the way it works is we attach a person on a tandem line to the zip line, which is basically a steel cable, and then they plummet down to theirs deaths, er, enjoyment. The next photo is the ropes course section (this time I'm on the ground, doing what, I'm not sure). The ropes course is essentially very much like a regular challenge course. The only difference is that you are fairly high up in the air. It's quite an experience for anyone, and I highly recommend everyone to try it out. I'll even operate it for you! Not for free though, haha.

I look forward to another wonderful semester, and to taking one of my favorite classes offered at CSUN.