M&S - illustration research

As we are both strong at illustration, we felt that this was definitely something we were going to incorporate into our designs. We therefore decided to research into this, specifically looking at character design.

Klas Fahlen

We were both attracted to Klas Fahlen's illustrative technique, using simple block shape and lines to build up really effective aesthetics. The individuals have a lot of character and personality, taking on quite a light hearted and humorous tone of voice. Simple colour schemes create quirky takes on different scenes and environments, with interesting composition and effective visuals.

These images were looked at for their inclusion of food and drinks products. We wanted to see how we could use colour and line to build up a simple but effective representation of objects and image. Opacities have been used to give a bit more 'life' to the illustration, as well as removal of stroke and inclusion of white line, which is something we want to include in our own designs. 

Below you can see how Fahlen's designs have been applied to food packaging and products. This packaging is extremely quirky, light hearted and effective. The characters have been used so that the interact within the composition, which is extremely clever. The contents are also visible, and has been used in a similar way to the characters. This will create great shelf appeal, attracting the customer to the designs. This also makes the packaging more of a keep sake, not something you would simply throw away after use. 

Miroslav Sasek

Sasek's work really appealed to us as it was in a similar style to the one we hoped to use ourselves. He had also produced some work that related specifically to Scotland. The illustrations take on a more traditional approach due to the use of water colour to build up shape and image, which makes the characters more detailed and intricate. The colours used are a lot more muted, and tend to be true to form, therefor the colours are what they are supposed to be in real life. 

Brave The Woods

I had previously looked at Brave The Woods during research for a brief last year, and I felt that this would be good inspiration for us in terms of how we want our illustrations to look. Again, we were attracted to the use of white stroke to the characters to add detail rather than using black. This really enhances the design and the colours by making them appear more vibrant than they already are. We want to make sure that we make use of both shape and linear illustration throughout, to create detail where it is needed.