This piece gave me a lot of insigt towards the methods in which product designers go about making packaging, as well as what they need to be mindful of. The easiest part of this project wasn’t any one thing in particular for me, but making the background pattern was somewhat relaxing, as it allowed me to excercise my creativity in making an aesthetically pleasing bit of art. Definitely, the hardest part was at the end when I lost my project, and had to start all over from scratch. That’ll teach me to save my project. It’s equally unfortunate that my parents don’t have a printer at their house, so I was unfortunatly unable to make the carton. As far as inspirations go, I would say the general aesthetic most coffee shops utilize, mostly with varying shades of brown, is what inspired my choices of color here.

This project I learned that photoshopping images together requires a lot more small complexities that I originally thought. It was easy once I found two images that actually fin together well, but before that I had plenty of trouble making the images look like they fit, as well as conveying what I wanted to with the visual metaphor. I think I could improve the project by showing the lions from a side view, which would make a linear gradient all I need to make it look like they’re making the season change as they run. Unfortunately, I came to this realization quite far into the project, so I just finished it instead of starting over from scratch. I think this assignment could maybe be improved by maybe being more specific on what sort of visual metaphor we should be creating. Even now, I feel like I may have cheated myself on this project by making a pun instead of visualizing the actual meaning of the phrase, even if I kind of have a fondness of how the final product turned out. I think I can definitely use what I’ve learned about harmonizing two images together in later projects, like how the lions running in the grass had parts of their limbs cut off by the magic wand tool in the early design, which made it look quite fake. If I had to attribute inspiration to one specific source for this piece, It would have to be album art from classic rock songs I’ve been getting into lately. Specifically album cover art from Dio and Journey made me want to try something with a sort of fiery action, while also being kind of abstract.