S://SEAGATE-REBRAND
Summary
Color, pattern, and diverse geometric forms work to overcome the “empty” and “boring” nature of the package designs. The colors are a mix of solid and tame gradients that injects some complementary life and alluring contrast. The geometric forms create different modes of asymmetrical balance that engages the consumer’s eyes. Trends that were noted during development were the use of solid colored borders and sans serif fonts. A trend that were established during development was the incorporation of line as a prominent element along with the utilization of gradients. This design differs from the competition in that it breaks the monotonous trend that nearly all hard drive manufacturers follow when it comes to their packaging. Many copy the same trend of sans serif, colored side bars, and empty backgrounds. WD has broken this trend with a few iterations of their packaging, but the majority follows the aforementioned design recipe.
Process
The project started off with me gathering intel on the market of hard drive packaging at the time and noting what aesthetic practices were being implemented. Upon presenting my findings to my colleagues I began exploring how I was going to transform the branding of Seagate in a meaningful way and noticed the terrible lack of personality in the packaging among different data storage brands. After several initial sketches, I began creating digital mockups of the new packaging which would serve as the core component of the advertisements that I would make later on. The digital mockups were refined and eventually translated into physically printed demo boxes. Next, I began preparing the three designs I had made for the transition into advertisement design. I researched diffferent advertisement campaigns of various products and brands. After another session of feedback, I wrapped up the project with a few final refinements and then processed them as renders.
Reflection
This was a multi-stage project that incorporated subsets of both branding and advertising. It was very important as I learned extensively about effective copyrighting, what makes for a strong ad campaign, and other valuable strategies. If I was to re-visit this project I would like to explore more with the colors and geometric forms as I feel that the package designs could have been more unique with a distinct style of design such as a mix of Swiss Design and Retro Futurism. The most successful part of this project in my mind is the advertisement campaign while the most lacking might be the packaging itself due to me restricting myself from thinking outside the box with the geometric forms. This of course can be debated since the point of packaging is to highlight the item in question that the customer is looking to purchase, so having a package that is too busy can detract from that end.
