Easter Break #Part 1

A new direction helped set my focus on what I needed to do and achieve over the next 2 weeks of Easter break. Changing my perspective on my care-package from boxes that felt too generic like a loot crate style to studying, identifying and creating designs for countries and basing my care-package on those designs as bags for people to carry and fill on their own. During the initial idea, I found it more interesting to come up with the design for the Singapore care-package, exploring the Singaporean identity, their national symbols and coming up with Batik true which is reminiscent of Singapore. When I presented it to my target audience of Singaporean students living abroad, they recognised the Singapore nature of the design. Also the decision to switch from a box to a bag was determined by the people (target audience) also as most students preferred a bag over a box. A box felt too boring and many stated that after its initial use, it would be left aside to collect dust. Whereas, a bag can be reused and brought out and about. From there, a new direction began to focus on the bag designs. Now the question was, which countries am I going to design the bag for.

I started easter break by focusing on developing and creating a series of designs for the exhibition. I already had a Singaporean package printed and ready for presentation. When I went on social medias to see which countries people wanted to see bags of, some of the answers I received included; Korea, India, Egypt, Philippines, Japan and Spain. I was determined to explore, research and produce as many designs as I could. To start of, I began with Korea, gathering feedback from Korean students staying away from home, many of them said that Magpies and the Korean flower, Roses of Sharon reminded them most of home. Hence, I began the design by looking into designing a magpie and the roses. However, while designing them, I made a mistake of making each individual stroke a layer, hence the hundreds of layers eventually collapsed on one another and caused a lag spike and sketching issue on the file that I to this day do not know how to fix. Hence, I decided to put the Korean design on pause and begin a new design not to waste too much time on fixing the one bug.

For me next country, I decided to go with India. Having many friends and family living away from India, I had people I could gather information from on/for designing and feedback on my progress. When asked, many suggested that India for them, they are reminded of home when looking at holi festivals, lights, indian food, henna/rajastani designs. For my designs, I made a decision to stay away from food designs as not everyone feels the same about food, hence I did some research into the Holi festival and henna/mendhi designs. From there, for design diversity, I decided to go with a more oriental feel and went with the rajastani mendhi design. When presented to my target audience, they loved the design and immediately told me about home, family events and other family occasions when and where there have seen henna or had henna. Hence, the design was well representative of India and home from there. From there, I created sample color palettes got an overall vote and decided on a color palette that was chosen by my target audience.

Next up, my second home, Egypt. Having lived in Egypt for 5 years, and having a huge target audience in Egypt, I wanted to revisit that culture and country for my 3rd care-package. Egypt, home to one of the world's 7 wonders; the pyramids, home to a rich ancient Egyptian culture and many iconic things about the country. For the Egyptian design, my target audience mentioned that doing a design that represented Egypt most is iconic enough to remind them of home. For that, I did research and based my design on the ancient Egyptian scripts of hieroglyphs. In that style, I implemented designs on the pyramids, the iconic 'evil eye' the columns around Egyptian temples. Many of my target audience agreed with me on this, but Egypt has the most beautiful sunsets and sunrises I have seen in my life, and I wanted to symbolise that in the design. Hence, unlike my other designs, I included a ring in my design to represent the sun that also looped around my Egyptian care-package logo. Overall, the design in the end, gained a positive reply from my audience and it definitely reminded them of Egypt and home.

Now, back to Korea?