Who is this article for?
As some of you know, I’m a graphic design student at the University of Tampa. Now before you decide to click off of this article, I want you to know that these tips are not only for graphic designers and artists. It’s for anyone who is creative, whether you work in Marketing, you’re an entrepreneur running your own business, you work in sales, you’re an event planner, etc. Of course, you can also use this in your personal life. I’ll be providing these tips using the framework of a graphic designer/artist, but you can adjust these tips to suit whatever your career or personal goal is.
Struggling with Overthinking
With that being said, I’ll start telling my story. I’ve always been interested in art growing up, and when I began college, I decided to major in graphic design. After I took my foundations digital art course, I began my upper-level graphic design courses. Like many people in the world, I have a tendency to overthink, and this was a problem for me when I began my upper-level courses. I would be given the project brief, and although I was excited to tackle the challenge, my mind would also start to fill with worry because I knew that there were so many possibilities for how a particular project could be designed. I wanted my work to be exceptional, especially since these were projects that would go into my portfolio, so I wanted to showcase work that represented my abilities at its best. Every time I thought of how I could possibly design something, I would second-guess myself because I would question if my ideas were good enough, if they could be better, if other people were going to dislike my ideas, etc. This kind of thinking is extremely toxic. In the future, I’m going to write an article on how I’ve learned to be intuitive and tap further into my creativity, but this story is about how to make a successful design composition. This article will help creatives who also have overthinking tendencies.
Life Changing Advice
In the spring of 2024, I took what ended up being my favorite design class, Branding and Packaging Design. For our first project, we were given the task to purchase a toy and re-market it to a different demographic. I decided to purchase a Barbie hairstyling head, and instead of marketing this to young girls, it would target single dads who would like to learn how to braid their daughters’ hair. This was a huge intellectual challenge. How do I make a toy that is meant for little girls appealing enough for dads to swipe their credit cards and utilize the product for themselves? I decided to ask my professor, Luciana Gassett, for advice. Everything she says is extremely insightful. Whether she’s giving a lecture in class or I’m having a one-on-one conversation with her, I’m always writing down what she says. She’s also very inspiring and after every conversation I have with her, I feel like the incomplete puzzle in my mind has been finished.
I walked up to Luciana and asked her, “When you’re faced with a design challenge like this, what do you think is the best way to acquire inspiration?”
This is what she told me:
“Focus on the feeling first, then decide how you want to tell the story.”
Let me explain…
1. Focus on the Feeling First
With anything you design, you need to answer the following questions:
- What are the pain points or in other words, specific problems that prospective customers of your business are experiencing?
- How do you want your product, service, or brand to be perceived by others? To answer this question, it helps to create a mood board. The mood board is not about compiling different (insert deliverable) designs or borrowing elements from existing designs. It’s about using visuals to show how you’re going to communicate the feeling.
A single dad has a young daughter that wants her hair to be braided, but he knows nothing about hair and there is no one else in the household who does. He would feel insecure if he was seen buying a Barbie hairstyling head, but if someone masculine like the Rock was seen using the product, men would be less apprehensive about buying the product. The packaging needs to feel masculine enough to alleviate embarrassment, but it also needs to feel like a family- friendly product, since the toy will encourage father-daughter bonding.
The moodboard will therefore show pictures of father-daughter bonding and will feel warm and affectionate. It could also include them doing things like watching or playing a game together, going on a walk, hugging, etc.
2. Decide how you’re going to tell the story
Now think about the journey. How are you going to tell the story? Think about various design decisions you can make to create the narrative.
For my toy, these were the decisions I made:
- When I completed this project, I drew an illustration of a masculine father, using the product with his daughter.
- I designed my package in the shape of a house to communicate a feeling of safety and coziness.
- I used a specific color palette (turquoise, burgundy and beige) and a diamond pattern to reference the style of traditional dads.
- I created a small rectangular box labeled, “Dad’s Toolbox.” Men enjoy the feeling of being a provider, whether they’re fixing a car or using hairstyling tools to style their daughters’ hair.
With any design, before you start designing the visuals, you have to design the experience first. Think about the function of this product or service. How are people going to experience your product? I’ll write more details about this in a future article.
If you’d like to see the result of this project, click the link below to view it on Behance!
https://www.behance.net/gallery/197326983/Pigtail-Pals-A-Packaging-Solution-for-Single-Dads