What software I will use:

I will be using Photoshop to create the designs for my advertisement poster and the packaging. I will be using a free mockup for soap packaging.

I will be using the mockup to input my designs so that they would be able viewed from a 3D object, to see how it will look in real life.

This is how the mockup looks like on Photoshop. I believe it will be very helpful for me as I will be able to showcase my design on a 3D object. 

The image above shows what I can do with the mockup, I can change the fonts and the name on the bar soap and the packaging of the soap. I can add my designs on the packaging box and I can change the colours of the walls and play with shadows of the objects and the colour of the soap bar. I believe all those tools will be enough to help me fulfil my goal.

Soaps for Women

In the world today I have noticed that mostly a lot of products have been divided between men and women. For example, in the production of perfume, there are feminine perfumes and masculine perfume. Especially in the production of soaps, there are soaps that are for men and there are soaps for women.  I think that depends on the scent of the soap that defines which soap is for who. Sweet smells are usually made for by the female group of individuals and the strong smells are for the male group of individuals. Because of this, I have decided that my market will be women. I would like to design the packaging and advertising for soaps for women. Especially since my soaps will be representing sweet tropical scents.

"On top of that, the neuroscience behind the gender-scent connection shows that an association with a certain memory influences your reaction to a scent. If you feel that flowery scents are feminine, it may be because those are the fragrances your mom always wore, and she wore them because her mom did, and so on. As anecdotal evidence, one survey found that some of the most popular scents for Britons were the cozy smells of suburban home life, including cut grass and Sunday roast. Another poll showed that on the island of New Zealand, favorite aromas included salt air and hangi cooking, a native cuisine." - Christine Venzon reference link

This quote was from an article named  "Why are scents attributed to a specific gender?" It talked about why there has been a division between female scents and male scents. Apparently, this was all due to how things were back in the 19th century. The men were the ones working and women would be referred to as delicate, busy with flowers and stay-home women. That is why sweet smells were made for women and strong smells were made for men. This idea relates to the other statement that "Blue" is for boys and "Pink" is for girls. It is all psychological. However, there some unisex scents made these days. Through this quote, it still encourages me to continue making the soap designs for women, because I see it as a historic culture that should never be broken or tradition. Even though it has nothing to do with biology and it was just a man made- idea that women should use sweeter scents,  as a woman that uses feminine products I think I have grown into it and I cannot change the scents or products I use, and I believe most women see it the same way because it has made us who we are.

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What types of Soaps will I design packaging for.

Introduction

I would like to create packaging designs and poster designs for exotic/tropical scented soaps. Two soaps will be fruity scented soaps and the other two will be flower scented soaps. I want these soaps to represent a tropical feeling. The image above consists of my ideas of how I want to represent my soaps.

reference link

I have looked at other packaging designs that had fruits and flowers on them. These designs interested me to create the packaging for exotic/tropical scented soaps. What really interested me about these packaging designs is that they seemed hand drawn.

These designs put emphasis on fruits and flowers. They truly stand out and the buyer will easily tell what the soap's scent is by the design. The design clearly gives a message since the drawings are bold and big. 

                                                                              

Reference Link

From this chart, I got to see the different tropical fruits that are out there. I have to pick two fruit that will be the scents of 2/4 of my soaps. That will be grapefruit and passion. Because I personally know how those fruits taste and smell and they are quite good.

Reference link

The image above shows the different tropical flowers that are out there. I can recognise 2, the hibiscus flower and the plumeria flower. 

The white and pink flowers on the image above are the types of plumeria flowers and the deep red flower in the middle is the hibiscus flower. I will be these flowers as scents for my soaps since I have had an experience with both. I grew up in Tanzania which is a tropical country and these types of flowers were growing in my backyard and they both have sweet scents.

Conclusion:
I will be designing the packaging and advertising for 4 tropical soap scents:

2 will be fruits scents:

• passion
• grapefruit

2 will be flower scents:

• plumeria
• hibiscus 

Packaging

As I was doing research about branding I realized that there are a lot of soap packages that have women on them. Because of this I decided to do more research on this, so I searched soaps for women and soaps for men.

                                                        

As I searched on Google  “Bar soaps for women” I saw that most of all the soaps had soft pastel colors and especially pink tones. The font for the branding names of the soaps were more curves and italic. What I understood about the soaps for women the designer for the packaging tried to feminize them by the way the placed the fonts and the colors they used for the packaging.

To get a comparison I searched for “Bar soaps for men.” I saw that there was a big difference between men soaps and female soaps. Men soaps have a more bolder font for the their packaging fonts and they consist of darker colors compared to the women’s soaps. With this information I can think about what is my target group. If my target group is women then I need to think about what will attract them and add those ideas into my packaging designs. If I will be designing the packaging for the men I will need to also think about what aspects relate to men. However if I can create a packaging for everyone but I will need to generalize it.

History of Soap

Soap Evolution/creation over time:

Soap has been around over the years in one form or the other. A site called (the soap kitchen) explains that soap that the use of soap dates back to 1000 B.C. However in those times they were not so pleasing to use as some soaps were made out of urine. From my understanding, I believe that soaps back then stank. However, through an evolution of soaps throughout time soaps were becoming developed. Although, around the 17th Century soaps still were unpleasant to use and were a bit harsh because they were made from caustic alkalies such as potash, leached from wood ashes and from carbonates from the ashes of plants or seaweed. Basically throughout all those years until the 18th Century soap was horrible. But then came a man with a solution, Nicholas Le Blanc, a Frenchman. Through him, soap until today has the same component which is sodium hydroxide. Sodium hydroxide is the base of most soaps today. After this discovery soap were continued to be developed in terms of shape and presentation. In the late 18th century, another innovation for soap was formed which was the "Transparent Soap", by Andrew Pears.

Pears

Even though it was an interesting innovation it was expensive to always buy since it would not last long as an opaque soap. Therefore opaque soaps were fonder. 

Soap Packaging Design:

Source:Pears

Source: Pears

The soap packaging back in the days for the Pear soaps were simple and had a distinctive font.

Source: pears

Even today's packaging design remains simple.

Major Project 2: initial Ideas and research

For my major project for this term, I will be creating a brand for soap and the advertisement for it.

This will include:
- 4 different designs for packaging for the 4 different types of soaps
-An advertisement poster for 2 types of soap (billboard, social media, billboard, etc.)

So far I have looked into soap brands such as Yardley, Lux and Dove. These were the main soap brands I used while growing up. I decided to create a branding and advertisement campaign for soap because of my interest in how a product's packaging can influence a customers attraction towards the product. I also chose soap instead of any other product because of how it is a necessity in life, and it dates back to years ago, so therefore I chose so I could research on the evolution of it.

Source: Yardley

Source: Lux

Source: Dove

The soap's packaging that I have shown in this blog gave me initial ideas of how soaps are branded and how the packaging is designed. The brand name of the soap is bold in every package in any type of soap package. The design on the package relates to what the soap consists of/ or the name of the soap. The packaging of the soap that stands out to me is the Lux's one because it has a lady on the package. The first thought that goes through my head when I saw this packaging design is that this soap was made only for women. But not just any type of women, women who want to smell luxurious or us luxurious soaps, because of the lady's pose and style.

With all of these thoughts about the lux design, I will be looking into why women are placed in some of the soap advertisement and packaging. I will be looking at the history of it and learn from it, with this research I will get an idea of how to create my designs.

Here is my sign off sheet: Valencia Kitainda Major Project Art, Design & Media: Ethics Form

Colours and feelings

Starry Night by Van Gogh

In this piece by Van Gogh, 

The Kiss By Gustav Klimt

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Great Wave of Kanagawa (KANAGAWA OKI NAMI URA) By Hokusai