Designing Your Own Cereal Box using Photoshop

Requirements:

You must come up with an original name for your breakfast cereal. The name may be ironic or humorous but may not contain any profanity or sexual references. You must have the teacher approve your design before creating your product. Follow the instructions below and create colorful three dimensional lettering for the front of your box. 

Next, you must design your cereal's mascot. 

Types of cereal box mascots:

1) Cute goofy cartoon human types (leprechaun, fairy, snap crackle and pop, elf, Count Chocula etc).

Attributes: looks like a cartoon like, happy, childlike energetic and mischievous sprite.

2) Cute, colorful animal characters: similar to the human type ones in personality. Some even look like a human in costume (Trix rabbit).

3) Actual piece of the cereal with a face, arms and legs.

Consider your product's target audience. Is the cereal supposed to appeal to children?

Kelloggs Cornflakes Logo, 1957

Or adults?

Read this article to get inspired before you begin designing your mascot:

https://graphicmama.com/blog/21-famous-brand-mascot-designs-time/

We have a scanner in the classroom so you may draw your mascot on paper, outline it with Sharpie marker and then scan it. You may also draw it with the tablet directly in Photoshop.

After scanning your cartoon, upload it to your Google Drive so you can access it from your computer. Open it with Photoshop, change the PSI to 300 and click 'select, color, shadows'. Slide the tool until only the black lines are selected. Next, click edit, copy, file, new, edit paste. This will give you a document with only the black lines visible and no additional noise. Next, click select, re-select, edit, fill black. This will give you a crisp black outline. You will then go into the layer below to do all your painting. Click select, de-select, go into the layer below and click re-select. Then click on the brush tool, pick your colors, adjust the width of the brush and begin painting. Here are some video tutorials outlining the digital painting processes that professional designers and illustrators use in Photoshop: 

If you would prefer to try your hand at creating a mascot by combining shapes using Adobe Illustrator, below is a video showing you how. This video is extremely valuable if you want to learn how to use Illustrator but are used to using Photoshop. I go over the differences between the two programs and how they work:

Some students may wish to take a photograph and transform it into a cartoon character using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. The video below will show you how to accomplish this:

Next, you must create a simple brand logo for your imaginary cereal's parent company. Use the 'less is more' philosophy here. The parent company produces a lot of foods, not just sugary kids' cereal. The logo's aim is to be distinct enough to elicit instant recognition and yet simple enough that it looks appropriate everywhere. Over the course of the last century, all major brand logos have evolved, becoming simpler and cleaner looking over time. Before you begin, take a look at the examples below: 

Click here to read an article about the evolution of logos and to see more historic examples of this phenomenon.

Logos need to be simple and use limited colors because they are printed very small on all surfaces of the package and need to be instantly recognizable. They are also composed of simple shapes; often a circle, rectangle or square. Below is a video showing you how to create the lettering for your logo using Adobe Illustrator:

Next, you will be required to design a maze for the back of the cereal box. Use http://www.mazegenerator.net/ and save the maze as a PNG. Open the PNG in Photoshop, add a layer and use your mascot as a character, trying to get through the maze to get to the delicious cereal. Add any other details you want to the story.

Save all the assets for your various designs in a folder on your desktop. Twice a week you will need to submit your work in progress via Google classroom. Once you are done creating the above assets, Open up the box template below and begin to assemble your finished design. Consider how you want to design the background color of the box before adding the other assets. Simple, bright colors work best. 

While assembling your design, click 

'View'>'Show'>'Grid'

This will enable you to easily control the layout, line up images and text and center your design assets. Be sure to uncheck the grid to make it disappear before you save your final JPEG. The finished files should be both 11x17 and 8.5x11 so we can print out both larger and smaller versions. The resolution should be 300 PSI.

Add the necessary text to complete your design as a finishing touch. 

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