As a starting point for the bottle design I got a template from google and coloured them red and grey for Coke and Diet Coke. This was so that I could utilise the exact shape as this in itself is recognisable to the brand.
I then started with the Coke bottle and began applying my character designs to it. It could be really straight forward as seen above but I feel this is way too simple and just doesn't look right at all. As seen with the bow, once you start resizing this and moving it around so it compliments the size and shape of the bottle it begins to look a lot better. I also changed the bow to red to be in keeping with the brand colour. It doesn't matter that it matches the bottle colour because of the black outline I have used.
Once I applied the orange/pink and blue presents to red I thought it didn't really work well because there was too many colours within the design and they seemed to clash. I decided to change the colour of the presents to christmassy colours as this is definitely more in keeping with the theme.
Once you see these new present colours alongside the other imagery it definitely works a lot better as a set because all the various colours compliment each other. I then started to play around with the fact that the imagery could go around the sides of the bottle instead of being shrunk down. This works better because the designs are making the most of the space.
When I showed the intial present design to a couple of friends they suggested mixing the colours up a bit because the whole design was looking really uniform and quite plain. I experimented with a few more colour mixes and felt this was a lot better because it's visually more interesting.
I then started looking at possibly using the characters on an angle and different sizes but if you shrink them they look a bit lost on the bottle which isn't very good because they are supposed to be the main focus. There was also the idea of not using the full vector but the head alone looks really odd and as though it's floating.
I thought the background looked a bit plain so I created a vector of a snowflake from a sourced image and applied this to the background. I think this looks really good because it doesn't have wasted space anymore and still fits in with the theme. It also links back to my survey because snow was one of the most popular christmas things so it's nice to bring another element of this in.
Due to the fact I'd thought so much about utilising the space of the bottle and also one of the other projects I was working on I thought about the idea of using the imagery to create a repeat pattern. I created the small area of image on the left and the copy and pasted this over a large area in order to create the repeat pattern on the right. This looks really good on it's own but how will it look on the bottle shape?
I applied the design to the bottle shape and think this is so effective! The whole design definitely utilises all the space and it's quite nice to see the imagery repeated because it will definitely make it memorable. The overall design looks well considered and the ratio of red space to imagery is balanced so it looks like a good final solution that can then be taken forward onto the other bottle designs.
I also created the repeat pattern on a grey background so that the same design could be applied to Diet Coke bottles. Although the design doesn't look as strong on this, it still works.
Although I really like the reindeer bottle about I feel that because they sit one beneath the other perfectly it doesn't show off the overall repeat pattern to it's full potential. I rotated the whole pattern to one side so it was slightly wonky and then applied this to the bottle design. This definitely works a lot better because it looks more random which is definitely more visually engaging and even though you can't always see the reindeer fully, you see enough to know what it is.
These are the two repeat pattern designs I created for the bottle.
I then did the same thing with the santa design. Created a small image which I then turned into a repeat pattern, rotated it slightly to one side and then applied it to the bottle design. I moved the design slightly over so I had a choice of which looked better on the bottle. I think the one including more of santa seems better as this is the main focus of the bottle.
Santa repeat patterns.
Then finally I used the same technique again to create the present bottles! Due to the fact i've used the same technique across all of them, it links them all together quite nicely. The repeat pattern idea definitely seems to be a winner.
All the bottle designs together before logo application
This shot proves that they work well together as a set because not only do they have the snowflakes linking them together but the general layout consideration can also be seen across all of them.
When I initially started applying the logo I used this red band because I thought the fact there was white within the imagery might make the logo harder to be seen.
To test my above theory I tried the logo without the background. I really like the larger logo placed right across the bottle design but feel it gets a bit lost on the santa bottle and also on the smaller logo that same thing happens too. The larger is however, high impact so people may still be able to tell what it is but do I want to take that risk with such a renowned product?
The logo is slightly too small on this design and is overpowered by the imagery.
This looks a lot better. I don't think the logo needs to be huge because people might see the red and figure out what the product is intially. Having it in the middle also means that the eye is drawn to it straight away.
The same designs and logo layout applied to the Diet Coke bottles. Still as effective so this is definitely something to take forward.
How the two bottle designs work together as a set. For some reason the colours seem a lot higher impact on the red background but the two still work together.
Diet Coke logo isn't as effective without the grey background, it gets a bit lost in the imagery.
I then realised that I hadn't even considered the back of the bottles and my first thought was to utilise the bow design. Once I applied this to the back I realised the front didn't fit in because it didn't look as though a bow was going round the whole bottle which is what I was trying to achieve. I applied a black outline around the logo on the front and this made it look like the two elements were connected. It made sense to have the bow at the back in the middle because this was where I had placed the logo and I wanted the whole thing to look connected.
I showed the original bow design to a friend and they said that the black line around the bow design wasn't really working. It made the bow look too obvious and didn't really compliment the rest of the design. They suggested having the black line darker red instead so it still stood out but also blended in with the rest of the design. This was a brilliant suggestion because I feel this looks so much better. It looks a lot softer and easier on the eye and doesn't take anything away from the imagery which is a big focus.
The side of the bottle also needed to be considered. The sides would be this plain red colour as seen on the background of the back and front and as minimal as possible but at the same time large enough so that the relevent nutritional information can be included on there and the barcode etc.
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