The write-up below was done for a 2D graphics class, originally featuring a much earlier version of the design. It exists here for posterity.

The title banner will feature a bit more of a curved over appearance of depth, as you can see from the rough mock-up. The general lines of the streets will feature a sort of depth effect as seen there, giving them a sort of look of floating in front of the rest of the document. This will be true of all elements in this design, including the compass, which will be in the lower left corner of the image with a serif typeface using stencil-like cuts between the serifs of the letters. (I’m not sure of the exact way to word this, but it’s common in a lot of modern serif fonts.) The top of the compass will be accentuated with a fleur de lis design.

Underneath the banner will be a tree pattern which comes underneath the title banner and up to near the edge of the lake. I’m still going to experiment some with fonts for the street names, but I’m thinking an uppercase sans serif. I might back down on that and go with a serif font if it conflicts with the design, though; we’ll see how legible it is once the final design comes together.

In addition, the legend will go in the bottom center of the design, in the empty area where the street runs across. I’ll put more trees in that area, with a square box going across.

The biggest things going forward are cleaning up some rough edges – most notably on the lakeside – and adding the street names, as well as the aforementioned tree elements which will be added to many clear areas of the design.

The background on each side of the carton are designed using a custom 60’s inspired pattern. The front of the packaging will feature a pie slice with a retro-inspired crosshatch, and a title in the same font as the custom oat creamer logo reading “APPLE PIE SPICE”.

However, I was having some notable scaling issues with the graphic – when it’s reduced in size, for some reason it gets strange artifacts. Here’s a demonstration to show what I mean:

If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know. The blue box on the back of the container will have a product description, as well as another image in the lower corner to reiterate the general theme.

The first side panel will feature the circular designs accompanied by either a white or black stripe, off of which will be similar text blurbs to the official product describing its individual aspects. I don’t think I’ll use the hemp cream one – that seems like a bizarre thing to advertise putting in your oat milk – but I’ll put the “plant-based” aspect on the front cover as the third circle.

Finally, the last side will feature nutrition and ingredient info. Again, similar to the official package, though I’ll likely do some tweaks to it for legibility on the sharply-detailed background. I’m also considering expanding the points on the design up into the edges of the box – again, opinions are appreciated on that.

1. Different cameras produce different results.

If you take two photos with different devices of the same image, you would initially expect that you would find the images to be for the most part identical.

However, that simply isn’t the case. Different cameras have different strengths and weaknesses, and working with each is an important piece of the puzzle. For instance, my parent’s wonderful Canon DSLR looks great in majestic, outdoor vistas, but under low light conditions, its colors look yellow and unrealistic, characteristics which might have to be tuned in a photo editor before using the image professionally.

In comparison, the image has far more blotchy grain on the iPhone 6, which leads its images to look more smeary as a result. This is caused by multiple issues – most notably, the iPhone camera has some significant post processing done to all images taken on the device. It also doesn’t feature the same adjustment abilities as the Canon camera, with a flatter lens which lacks the ability to do the kind of depth-of-field tricks you can with the Canon.

2. Work as close to the source as you can.

The idea of generational loss might sound like an old problem – in an era of digital things, it seems so easy to just download a copy of something and have a lossless duplicate of the future. But even with all of the technology we have today, there is often still a difficulty in finding the highest quality sources for a project.

Certain images, however, will have minimal losses when scanned. Generally, image objects (read: text or art documents) will not lose significant fidelity if scanned under optimal conditions, as their contents are essentially put together in lines or curves.

Also, be aware that a damaged image will be harder to recover information from, as it will require more work to get it in a completed state. Magazine images are notoriously riddled with these issues, requiring heavy processing to look decent in a digital format. (To name a few processes: descreening, despeckling, crease/damage/dust removal, color correction, noise reduction, and (in the case of extensive damage) segment perspective warp and correction. Here’s an example of almost all these issues in this 80’s aestheticized Sears catalog: