One of the projects that I worked on during this semester was making up a sticker label to go on a product. The idea was to take the shape of a label on a container of our choosing, put that shape into Adobe, and make an entirely new product that could go in that container. I had lots of fun making this product, let me tell you about the process!

I looked around my apartment to find something that I could make a label for. I ended up grabbing a beverage out of the drink and decided that I would invent my own drink. The jug of Arizona juice that I grabbed had a label that was shaped to the container. I knew that I would be able to make a cool new drink out of this, so I brought my jug to school and got to work.

Before starting, a plan had to be made. I knew that it would be some sort of beverage, but there are so many drink options to choose from nowadays. I decided to do a tea beverage, since Arizona (the brand of the jug I used) was a tea-making company, and I didn’t want to stray too far from that idea.

I started brainstorming titles and sketching out ideas for my tea. After playing around with some words, it was decided that my brand would be called TnTea. My tagline would be: “Tea with explosive flavor!”. I wanted to make something that could convince viewers to want to try my product. I think I carried that out very well in the final product, which I will show at the end.

Now that I had a name, a tagline, and a few basic sketches, it was time to assemble my label. I first needed to know the dimensions of my label, which proved to be a little bit difficult. Since the label was on a 3D object, you couldn’t just photocopy it easily. So, I used translucent paper to trace out the label, then scanned out the traced shape onto my laptop. It was definitely a struggle writing on paper with a jug under it, but I managed to complete the next big step in my product label making. Below is the traced outlines, with the left shape being the front label and the right shape being the back label.

Once I had my shapes into Adobe Illustrator, it was time to put my sketches into action. I wanted to have my labels have a grunge-y, explosive feel to them to match the explosive theme of my product. My text that I used throughout the label is very eroded and rugged to seem as though it was exploding, or it has been affected by an explosion. I went for a color palette of yellow and orange, with some reds and blacks to complement. These choices give off the effect of a mushroom cloud, which is something you’d see following an explosion.

I really liked how everything really goes together in my product label. It looks unified, and I can pretty much justify every thing and every choice I made while designing it. The colors really help, and it grabs your attention.

However, I’d still change a few things. I totally forgot that a product you are selling needs a barcode added to it, so I need to make some room and add that onto the back of my label. I am also only partially satisfied with how the dragonfruit-dynamite hybrid turned out. I illustrated it from scratch with the help of a reference, but ended up not making it the best that I could since I was on a time crunch, and needed to work on other things too.

But, I am really happy with the final product! I can’t wait for when we get to print it out on to sticker paper, and I can see the label on the jug that I used as reference. Here is my final label! Let me know your thoughts on it! Any words of advice or comments would really mean a lot to me!

TC