OUGD505: Studio brief - Initial design decisions. (Research publication)

Before I began to think of the design for the inside pages I wanted to concrete design decisions for the front and back cover as these would inspire the inside of the book.

I looked back to my research that I had done about Yankee candle design, as I want to make sure the book I am going to create is coherent with the rest of the brand. 

I found that the brand had a very consistent design thread throughout the years that it had been around with a few special editions. It is Yankee candles consistently traditional identity that has attracted and continues to attract its loyal customers. I wanted to continue with Yankee candles already, well built brand. 

Yankee candle has already taken advantage of the book shape/motif in a couple of its products. Here they have used a book as a structure for a box. I noticed that although the book designs differed slightly, there were in fact some aspects that stayed the same across the range of designs. A traditional approach is taken to any font choice, these from what I have seen are clean script fonts (as a pose to overly hand drawn) and serif fonts used in mainly all capitals. (This would have to work for headers but small case serif would have to be considered for body copy.) Colour selection seems to be quite traditional with the use of jewel/ royal colours, strong reds, golds, navy, forest greens and white. Any textures which appear are also classic, for example the fairisle/ knit print seen in the bottom image. 

The shape of the book structure is the same across all three books and replica of that of a case bind, the box takes advantage of the natural wear and tear of a case binded book, when they become old and are naturally compressed within a bookcase the spine of the book curves under the compression.

I want to imbue the same sense of traditional craftmanship within the publication I make. Therefore It would be appropriate to create my publication using a case bind to reflect the products of Yankee candle. The boxes seen below are also an indication of how I could do my packaging for my book. When opening the cover of the book there is a window in which the user can see the products placed within the box, I could continue with this idea for my box, creating a window for my book. 

Source

Below I have created an initial idea of how the book would appear with a case bind, and how it could could slot into a box of this format. Using the images I have collected in my research I tried to draw up the possible box to be as authentic to the original as possible. 

The drawing shoes a similar yet not exact format of a box close to that of the original yankee candle one. I believe that the box I have designed is much simpler than the one shown above by Yankee candle. My design eliminates the struggle of playing around with tabs and folding sections to close up the box when finished. I also think that by implementing a pull out drawer format it eliminates the problem of the fold up side become weak and not being able to hold the contents anymore. The box has the same window design as the original by Yankee candle, and the drawer which slides in and out does not impede the view through the window of the box.  

I liked the idea of staying true and original to Yankee candle, and so for the next two packaging ideas I stayed true to the yankee candle book motif, making slight changes to try and improve the appearance and stability of the piece. 

My next idea focused on the idea of stability where I decided to combine both Yankee candles original box idea (with folding tabs) and the sliding tray. If made out of a thick enough stock the the folded tabs should be strong enough to hold the tray in without snapping under tension. This is something I will test at a later stage. As shown in the diagram the book slots into the tray, and the tray is slid into the larger box where the edges are folded in to ensure the tray does not slip out. 

The slipping out of the tray is an issue that could arise in the first design as there is nothing to hold the tray in. However looking back at older yankee candle designs, a red ribbon has been used to hold the front and back cover together, this could solve this issue. 

The third and final net I designed is quite a bit different to the previous two. This design has no open sides where a tray is able to slide in and out. The inside box (tray in previous design) Is fixed into the box during construction. This tray however is slightly different to the others. It harvests a 'pillow' underneath the book, as seen in boxes for items such as iphones, so that the surface of the book is even to the edges of the box. There is a thum gap at the right of the book to allow for easy access to the book. This tray is placed inside the box during consrtuction so that the only piece of material that can be removed is the book, through the main window. This idea would completely solve any issues of the box becoming too weak. 

For the aesthetic/printed design of the piece I looked for inspiration from their previous products, where I came up with the idea of 'opening the door on the legend of Yankee candle' the front of the box would have the aesthetic of a door, and as this is in a book format, the box would open, as would a door. 

The piece of previous Yankee candle design that inspired me the most was the snowy house votive candle set which features its own doorway. I debated how I would get the peace to fit in with the classic Yankee candle brand that had already been established, as they use a lot of photography and have just started to branch out into illustration. And so I found some helpful guidance from this piece which uses real life textures and gradients combined to create and integration of photography and illustration. 

I then went on to consider the book which would be placed inside the draw as shown in the sketches above. The idea I had was to make the aesthetic of the book appear like a parcel. Bounded in a parcel wrap texture like brown craft paper, with a red ribbon criss crossed over the front. 

This idea arose from the concept of having a parcel posted through ones door. (as this is what the front cover of the box will ressemble). But I needed to think of a way in which I could apply the title of the book to this aesthetic. 

One idea that I thought of was to have a design on the front of the book which resembled a gift tags as seen on parcels. However I didn't want the design of the book to appear too celebratory themed as the purpose of the book was to tell the story of Yankee candle, not to wholly celebrate it, and so I went back to the drawing board. 

I thought more about how people label parcels when I came across one rather fitting idea. A wax seal. 

Wax seals were an emblem used to prove the authenticity of documents and are known to be entirely traditional. Exactly how Yankee candle appears to be. However it is not solely the link of classic style which I believe drew these two ideas together. Not only would it make the book appear to be the authentic story of Yankee candle, and an important document. But the wax seal plays entirely upon the Yankee candle brand, much like the seals are made from wax, so are Yankee's biggest selling point, the candles.

I drew up a plan of how it would be possible for me to make my own wax seal. Using the laser cutter, I could cut through a circle and then engrave my design into the surface of the circle of wood. I would then cut out a few more circles of the same thickness and size and stack these on top of the engraved plate to reinforce it. Followed by a stack of smaller wooden circles on top to form a handle. If the laser cutter didn't engrave the design deep enough I could go around this with a narrow nibbed soldering iron to deepen the design. The lettering would not be too delicate as I plan on doing the design much larger than a regular wax seal.

The design I did was very simple. In the centre of the stamp shows the classic Yankee candle jar with a love heart in the centre, a commonly used motif on other platforms such as online and on carrier bags. 

Surrounding this motif is the title of the book in a circular motion ' The story of Yankee candle' which will be written in the brands typeface Book Antigua used for other elements such as the logo, so that the book is consistent with the rest of the brand. 

I created a digital mock up in illustrator of what the book front would look like using a parcel paper texture, with mock red ribbon and wax seal ontop.