Botanical Illustration Package Design – Eldorado Food Company, Scandinavia
One of the projects, or two in fact, Ive been working away quietly on over the past year or so, has been producing two botanical illustration ranges for Eldorado. This Scandinavian food label’s parent company is Sweden’s second largest food retailer, who holds an impressive 20% market share in Sweden, so to be featured on their food packaging is a very exciting project to be a part of indeed.
The first brief was to create a series of canola botanical illustrations to feature on two lines of margarine products. These illustrations were rendered in acrylics and needed to be clean, fresh and precise, and to work around the packaging template with as much scope for variation as possible. One botanical illustration plate was rendered on white, the other on green for both the full and low fat varieties, so I began setting out to make just the right artwork for my clients needs.
Funnily enough I was on a bus full of people just a few days later and we happened to come across a stretch of rolling, vivid yellow canola fields whilst traveling to my Cradle Mountain painting workshops. GASP!! ‘Stop the bus!’ I said, ‘I need photos’ and no one put up a fight at all… they simply sat, peering out the window watching me as I gathered all I needed for the project. Samples, photos by the dozen, all in a heartbeat on a lonely, spectacular stretch of highway to the wilderness before clambering back onto the bus again. They knew me, they knew why, and all shared in the journey of this project in some beautiful way too. We went on to our week long wilderness masterclass in Tasmania, enjoying one of what was to become, the best weeks of our lives, painting with amazing people in the most magical of places, the canola patiently waiting for my return to my home studio.
And I did return… back in the studio the layouts began, layouts and templates, layouts and templates, drawings, emails, alterations (almost none ;)) and finally approvals… and the canola illustrations began. How I loved working in acrylics again! With the artwork and my role complete, my amazing team scanned them with state of the art equipment and off they went to production… the long process of production, into the hands of the designers. Its a wonderful process, engineering a clients idea into reality, watching it run through each process to completion, and both my client and myself are extremely pleased with the end results for our efforts. A great team, bringing another clients vision to reality!
With the client super happy, another brief soon found its way to my studio table… a challenging series of 6 fruit and berry illustrations to adorn their preserves packaging. Rendered in watercolour this time, I barely left my studio for… forever, to get them completed on by the deadline. (Lets never speak of commercial deadlines again) Needless to say, its one thing to be an artist and quite another to apply these skills consistently and reliably to the demands of commercial work, especially when you simply refuse to ever compromise the quality of the artwork, or to miss a deadline. This time was definitely a challenge, but i completed the artworks and emailed the scans off an hour short of my deadline… then drank a glass of bubbles with my mum and slept for 2 days I think!
A unique, custom botanical illustration was created for strawberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, blueberries, raspberries and apples complete the series, and Id also like to eat each of the products the packaging was destined for too. Again, a clear, clean and fresh result was our aim and we achieved that beautifully too. With both lines now hitting the supermarket shelves over Scandinavia, its an exciting outcome to two wonderful projects. ‘Your work will now be in the homes of thousands of people around the world’ a message came to me from an Instagram follower watching the progress, a wonderful thought that until then had never crossed my mind! ‘Youre making the world more beautiful’ said another… and to think, I was thrilled at the client being so happy with the results, but now it seems all the more awesome.
Thank you Eldorado for allowing me to be a part of your projects, and thank you to everyone who followed along on what I was able to share during production. I appreciate you!
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