SLO Seltzer Product Design
For my senior project, I created a mock hard seltzer company complete with can designs, a carrier box design, and a social media presence. My goal for this project was to create a brand that is customized towards San Luis Obispo residents. Each individual flavor design was inspired by a popular location around the San Luis Obispo area. To create these designs, I used Adobe Illustrator. Then, to create the can and box prototypes, I used Adobe Dimension.
Design Process
I started this project by researching other successful alcoholic beverage designs that I liked. Then, I used these designs as inspiration to start brainstorming and sketching out logos. I used these sketches to guide my work in Adobe Illustrator in creating my final logo design.
Using this logo, I continued to create the cans, box design, and overall cohesive brand. I chose my individual flavors, and created the designs for each one in Adobe Illustrator using reference images from each location by which they were inspired.
Packaging Prototyping
After finalizing my logo and each of my flavor designs, I moved into Adobe Dimension to begin placing them onto the actual cans and carrier boxes. I wanted to keep each can pretty monochromatic to allow for the logo to pop out in white.
As for the box, I kept to the color scheme of the three cans to keep everything cohesive. I pulled colors from each flavor and created a swirly, almost tie-dye pattern in Adobe Illustrator to accomplish this. I also made sure to include all of the required elements seen on other alcoholic beverage packaging to ensure that my product would be FDA and TTB approved.
Lastly, I created an Instagram account to develop a digital presence and bring attention to my brand. I chose Instagram over other social media platforms because it is a great way to connect with other local residents of San Luis Obispo in a more casual manner, and especially with my target market of Cal Poly students and recent graduates. I made sure to keep the social media account cohesive with the brand by utilizing the same color scheme as SLO Seltzer's packaging.
Another goal of mine with SLO Seltzer's social media presence was to make it as interactive as possible, so for one of my Instagram posts I created a large collage in Adobe Illustrator that viewers could swipe through. In this collage I included each of the seltzer flavors, with images of the locations that they were inspired by. This post almost mimics a digital tour of SLO, which I think is really cool and unique and a great way to attract my target market. Each section of the collage is pictured below:
