Pirate Riddle

Recently I was approached about illustrating a riddle which was to go into the quiz section of a leading accountancy magazine.

The riddle was pirate themed and went as follows:

A pirate ship was anchored at Smuggler’s Cove with its rope ladder hanging off the port side into the water. The ladder’s rungs were each spaced one-foot apart, five rungs were above water level. With the tide coming in from the starboard side at a rate of six inches an hour how many rungs were still visible four hours later at high tide?

Personally I feel my strengths lie in character design and so for me it was crucial to try and squeeze in as many as possible, whilst not distracting you from the key point of the riddle.

I was really pleased with the final outcome and hope that this will be a good launchpad for future magazine commissions.

 

Scamps

Recently I have been fortunate enough to do a lot of scamping in the design projects I have been involved in.

For those of you that don't know, scamps are basically just very quickly drawn visuals of an idea that you want to pitch to a client.

Over the years I have done less and less of these, as generally (from a personal point of view), the client prefers to see digital visuals. I believe they feel it gives them a much greater idea of what their final product would look like.

If budgets are tight it can be a good way to portray your idea without having to go into the effort and cost of creating an artworked visual.

Recently I have been fortunate enough to create scamps for pitches to Coke and Warner Bros, but unfortunately I don't have any scans of those, though I do have some I was working on last week which was based around a tennis publication.

 

Wolf Blass Visuals

I know I have been promising this for a long time, but finally I have posted some of my more recent design projects I have been working on.

I know it seems that I favour my illustration, as I always seem to blog about that rather then design, but that really isn't the case. I tend not to post too much of my design work immediately online, as I generally like to wait until the product/promotion has been fully launched before I do so.

There are some people who like to work on a job and post samples of it immediately in their blogs etc, but it can be a risky thing to do. If I am honest, I don't think doing this is particularly fair on the client who has no doubt spent a lot of money on the project and would certainly not want to have anything leaked online before they launch the product/promotion for themselves. You could also find yourself in all kinds of trouble for doing so, which is why I like to wait.

The project I have posted below is something I worked on at a London agency earlier in the year for the wine brand Wolf Blass.

The brief for this project was simple, they wanted to create a new way of promoting offers on their bottles of wine, which go beyond the more conventional neck labels.

I have included a few of the early scamps I worked on before I went ahead and created the final Mac visuals.

Here are the mocked up Mac visuals for each of the concepts I created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Some of the concepts were purposely based on the more conventional neck labels that are available, as it is a design that Wolf Blass do favour. I did try to make them a little more dynamic by adding die cut elements to the designs to help them standout in the what is already a very competitive market.

The final two designs shown above were something which were a little more adventurous. The first is a silicon collar that is placed on the neck of the bottle which changes colour depending on the temperature of the wine. The second design is a bottle wrap, which I feel could stand out quite well, as it is something rarely seen on a wine bottle.

I could go into further detail as to why I approached the brief in the way I did, or how I created certain parts of the design, but unfortunately time is of the essence for me tonight (and to be honest, I am sure you aren't really that bothered). I will be happy to answer any questions you may have on this project though.

I do hope to post some more of my design concepts and visuals on here soon, but in the mean time, why not check out my site by clicking here. 

All designs and concepts are strictly ©Dan Bailey 2011.