Group store

Pretty much it but it turned out pretty good and better than expected.  XD

Jewellery materials and making

With the process of making the physical product, one of groups members had suggested thae use a company to laser cut our product out of acrylic or any material we would like. The Site was called Shapeways. 

But a problem came up and it was that the products would not arrive on time and plus the P&H was quite expensive. I decided to seek out another source which could do something similar but wasn't international. This one was located in Sydney.

Only thing was that they were a little bit limited to materials but it seemed like a good option. I was also thinking along the lines or sourcing the plastic material on its own and then using the laser printer at uni to cut the product. 

Then anothler group member proposed that maybe we could try printing out our product on bamboo wood after having come across this jewellery example.

Yep, we were all for it next but sourcing the bamboo plywood for it was a bit tricky but one of my other group members suggested a place in Fyshwick that actually might stock it and the place was called Turners.

I checked out the place and YES they actually have the stuff but it had to be ordered in and it would take up to a week plus it was a bit dear.... We were also in a pinch as our prototypes were due in less than a week.

Different coloured bamboo wood.

Luckily, we didn't need the real stuff in the end as it was a prototype, which we just used scrap plywood for, and amazingly came out really well.

I got my hands on some 5mm plywood but it failed as you can see in the burnt board but luckily one of my group members found some scrap 3mm ply wood and it worked out. 

Earrings - Production Sketches

These are some concept designs of my products. Some were designed back in singapore but most were drawn from inspiration found over google :p

Earrings - inspiration

When it came to designing my product, I found it sort of tricky as in my point of view, I felt like my product wasn't unique in design enough. So, I looked for some interesting earring designs in hopes of inspiration whilst keeping in mind the main subject/object or center of the design.....if that makes sense.

I don't know if I did post it or not, but I decided to use the national flower of Singapore as the main centre piece of my design. The flower is an orchid known as Vanda 'Miss Joaquim'.

Why I chose it was because I love floral and flowers but also the flower embodied an essence of Singapore, such as its beauty and the beauty of Singapore along with its toughness to bloom all year round, which reflects on the people of Singapore.

Earring Packaging - Prototype

I was very pleased with how my prototype turned out. As you can see below are illustrator created templates for the packaging but the outer surface appearence differs a bit. I did so to correspond to each of the different earring designs of mine and this also adds a bit of creative differentiation to the product.

The photos below are the packaging prototypes in physical form. Though, in my opinion, they may have looked better if the outer surface appearance was printed on a heavier white cartridge paper. What I also found was that the adhesive spray I used to attach the white to black was useless >< double-sided tape did help fix up a few of the floors. Another problem was that the die-cut areas were un-even ><"

and to top the bad luck, one of the earrings and its loop had to break off.

Plus I didn't know what was up with the lighting in the studio...?

But like wise, this is a prototype and the errors found are/were fixable. Overall, teh tutors overlooking my product said I was on a good track ^^

Earring Packaging - Production/prototype

Above is a trial version of my packaging design. Though, how it turned out was not to my expectation as I discovered I hadn't made the sides half the size that they should be. But overall, I was pleased with how the die-cut and packaging lock turned out.

Earring Packaging - Production Sketches

So here we have are some production sketches of my earring packaging.

The one below are the early stages, where I initially did not expose myself to alot of examples, in short - did not Google examples.

Then below are some further concepts I came up with after Googling some examples.

Earring packaging - inspiration

My first ideas on my product's' packaging was to box or contain it but also make it displayable. I wanted to try and minimize the amount of material used as one of the goals was to make the packaging eco-friendly.
What I found whilst researching earring packaging was that many earrings were just attached to a piece of cardboard with holes in them, regardless of the design of shape. It looked nice but didn't make the product feel that special.

So, the first two examples were eyecatching to me and I used them as a starting point.
Somewhere along the way, I was assisting one of my friends, who is in the same group, research a packaging idea for her product that is a pendant, and found the examples below quiet interesting. The die-cut patterns acting as a window to the product within was a nifty idea, which I could incorporate along with the brand logo.  

This one was probs made for confectionary.

The following examples were some other earring packaging examples I had come across, which I thought were pretty cool like the ones in the jar or the bird on, despite not being able to contribute any inspirational ideas for my packaging design.