I decided to go with my alternative idea, wood. I wanted to create a wooden box with a lid whose edges extended past the base of the box. The inside framing of the lid would fit snuggly inside the box, so that it would not come off easily. The box was drawn with a metallic handle, as I thought that complemented the design, as it seemed to fit the Victorian vibe well.
The bottle designs I had come up with varied. The first one in the lineup on the far left of my drawing sort of came out looking like a mock-up of an old fashioned milk bottle with a little more curvature at the neck. I drew indentations on the side, at the base of the neck in order to accentuate the inward thrust of the curve. The second has a coke bottle like shape, with rounded out protrusions on the ends of each curve. The third was an attempt to create something more angular, but it seemed antithetical to my theme's aesthetic. My last two drawings was my attempt to combine different aspects of the other three, as I thought each had its own appealing qualities. I ended up however using none of the designs from my preliminary sketches.
When I went to get supplies for constructing the packaging I ran into a set of bottles, that has some of the qualities I was looking for. Elegance was what I was trying to get the product to express, but in a way that was reserved, and not so in your face. My reasoning behind this was that most marketing is too in your face. This would seem to be a positive for marketing, however if all companies do this than all products tend to be advertised with the same gratuitous formula. Doing the opposite was my attempt to create a more distinguished, yet modest product. The makeup boxes and products that I had seen from the Victorian period were not overly decorated. Something like that would be more characteristic of the Baroque or the Rocco period, not the Victorian period. The same reasoning was applied to the container. I found a box that had a design that seemed to go with the Victorian theme better than my preliminary sketch. The box had a lid connected by hinges, along with two openings framed with wood sandwiching a piece a piece of plastic that looked like glass. The openings gave me an excellent opportunity to show off it's interior. I lined the interior with some burgundy colored suede to give it a vintage feel. I used some wood stain markers I had bought to stain both the outside and inside in order to make the exterior more presentable, as it originally had the texture of plywood. I went for an oak finish. For the bottles, I decided that instead of putting a paper label wrapped around the container, that I would mark a card stock label that had an elastic string going through the corner end. This then would be wrapped loosely around each bottle. On the card stock I hand drew the logo, along with the ingredients on the bottom. The bar code was located on the backside.
There were some drawbacks I must admit. Despite being against in-your-face advertising, the labeling wrapped around the bottles seemed to do just that. Since the tags were big, and very noticeable, the pattern repeating with many labels seemed to intensify this issue. In retrospect I could have made them less angular by cutting them. Adding curves to the shape of the label by cutting them, would of helped to subdue the agitation associated with how angular and large they were. All the bottles I used were of the same design. I wanted this to exemplify order and uniformity, but this move sort of backfired on me. I also could have added a little bit of filigree on the side, in a way that was decorative and subtle, rather than in your face. Though I did not get the critique I expected, this however did serve as a worthwhile learning experience.
