The Cricket Company sells kids’ haircutting capes and periodically updates the line with a new cape. When Cricket wanted to produce a new kids’ cape I explored many ideas, and we chose to use a comic book/super hero theme.
I found inspiration for the cape in the typographical sound effects found in super hero comic books. After creating several of my own, I used them to make a vector pattern in Illustrator. We sent the pattern artwork to the factory making the capes, and I photographed models wearing the capes when they were finished.
Next I began work on the packaging. There were a some constraints when designing the packaging for this cape. The packaging needed to have the purple gradient, show models in a specific manner and follow typographic guidelines I had set up for all the Cricket apparel product lines.
All other Cricket apparel boxes have a die cut window on the side to reveal the actual product inside. I wanted to do something different for the Super Kids Cape since this product was not like the typical haircutting cape. I used the idea of a super hero mask with eye holes cut out to give customers a peek at the actual cape inside. Below are several other mask designs I explored.
The back of the box has a full shot of the model to better show how the cape will look with a kid wearing it. The strap from the mask on the front wraps around to the back of the box helping to tie the overall design together.
I used elements from the typographic style of the cape pattern to create the logo. The 3D letters, slanted orientation and colors add a playfulness to the logo helping customers see this product as something geared towards children.
The cape store display follows the design of the packaging using the same colors and imagery.
I designed the sales sheet to look like a comic book cover. Below left is the actual sales sheet, and the sheet on the right is an alternate version.
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Super Kids Cape by Max Williams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.maxwilliamsdesign.com.
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