where is my tomato

Look at this beautiful tin of coffee sent to me by good old Ben — who, by the way, just got hired at Microsoft at their Seattle headquarters! Congrats, Ben!

The coffee came to me a couple weeks ago in a package, along with the postcard. Ben seems to have made it his mission to send me delicious coffee from his travels (first was from Hawaii — in fact, that was what prompted me to purchase a coffee maker in the first place, and it’s saved me tons of money), and this one came from Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. According to Nina, this coffee is quite famous and is generally the one used to make those condensed milk coffees at Vietnamese restaurants.

The coffee is delicious, and the tin is so wonderful that I think it will make up for the sorrow that will inevitably strike once I’ve finished the coffee. I wish I knew more about the design and how far back it goes. What is it about vintage packaging that’s so scrumptious?

My milk and cookie holiday shopping bags for Graphic Design I class, taught by Anne Fink. Santa would have a hard time dunking this cookie into the milk. Sorry, big guy.

Such great book designs by JR Harris. They have bookmarks sewn into the spine. Brilliant!

Found on The Dieline.

For this project my market audience was … well, people like me. We like to gather an eclectic bunch of well-designed, lovable items to build a perfect home environment in order to escape the big, bad world. Although the label design for my dish soap won’t keep out the sounds of excessive honking from below my window, the illustrations (should the series be continued with different scenes) are supposed to provide much scope for the imagination.

I must admit that I was hugely influenced by my summer internship at Random House in the Fodor’s Travel department when coming up with the name. I spent 3-4 weeks doing photo research for the 2010 New Zealand book, and naturally became obsessed with the kiwi bird. It strikes me as an unusual yet fantastic creature — the perfect mascot for dish soap meant to be used by daydreamers. (Other contendors for the name included Giant Mushroom, Friendly Mushroom, Purple Kiwi and Big Fluffy Cloud.)

My first choice wasn’t the green, but my classmates pretty much unanimously voted that the green was perfect because it looks like the inside of a kiwi fruit. In the end, I am quite pleased with the green.

Here’s what the bottle looks like all around:

Here the finished bottle stands with the bottle I’d originally purchased. Nina had pointed out that it looked just like a kiwi bird, and so of course I had to get it. Sadly, things did not work out with the curves, so there was a second trip to the Container Store. Still, the final bottle’s pump also looks kiwi beaky enough for me. Other key players in this project included Mrs. Eaves and my cheap watercolor set.

From my Package Design I class taught by Adam Straus.