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Lena Jeong

BFA in Graphics — Graphic Design
Course:
GPKG-202 Package Design 1: Design Principles
Faculty:
Daniel Hoy

Ramune Packaging

Ramune can be referred to a carbonated soda drink popular in Japan. I chose to do my final on designing the ramune bottles. For my concept, I created a hypothetical situation where the Ramune drinks would have 12 different flavors that all tied back to the 12 different zodiac signs. In common culture, zodiac signs are all associated with a personality—so using the zodiac signs I created designs that reflected the flavor and the signs.
Learning Outcomes:
There were many things that I learned from creating this project. It was a special one for me as I got to experiment hands-on with applying my design directly to the bottle, thus going through multiple revisions to fit the physical model as well. Because my concept was specific to zodiac signs and personalities, I had to think about communicating that effectively not only in my design but to my hypothetical audience.
I chose to design Ramune bottles for this project (to give a brief on what is Ramune, Ramune is a Japanese drink that generally refers to a carbonated soda). I wanted to create a concept that would appeal to young adults as many of grew up drinking Ramune as children, thus through my Ramune—I wanted my audience to relive the experience of drinking Ramune that wasn't target for children (as the original bottles are associated with children).
This project would hypothetically have 12 flavors in total—that all relate to the zodiac signs. I chose to specifically focus on the signs Pisces (Blueberry for their sensitive nature), Scorpio (Cherry for their passionate nature), and Taurus (Pineapple for their reserved yet sensual nature). So behind my design process, I researched each zodiac sign and their commonly associated personality traits and matched it up with a certain fruit flavor that would match them.
As shown clearly in this picture, I chose to go with a transparent label for my design to emphasize the drawings that were expanded in the back. Through this, my audience can see through the bottle and view the associated animals peeking through the label.
As shown to the left, I photographed the bottles myself. Using the ice available and using water to emphasize the cold drinks, I set up this to take pictures of my final variation of my design. The right shows different color variations that I tried, such as mimicking the blueberry colors—that ultimately did not make the cut as I chose to go with a transparent label.
One of the first variations of this specific design direction I was going towards to. Using a two color scheme and bold type that reads "Ramune," I illustrated each zodiac animal and used that so that my audience would be able to see their zodiac animal along with lighter tone illustrations of the fruit associated with the drink.
This shows the process of the different variations that I did. The first variation shows a lot more timid scaling in the type and drawings, which ultimately scaled up with the second variation. At this point, I was heading for a colored label as shown in 1/2 pictures but as I headed towards the final variation, I decided to go with a transparent label where you could clearly see the illustrations of the zodiac animals through the front label.
Below shows the some of the key design process points that further explains my design choices.