poster

Personalised Comfort Box- Fear of Needles

 

Bedtime Comfort Box- Fear of the Dark

Logo

I definitely want my logo to be mostly hand-made to give a friendly and welcoming tone. Not one hundred percent sure what materials to use. Need to experiment more.

I began by scribbling ‘Comfort Box’ using my graphics tablet to see what effects I could come up with. This gave me the inspiration to create a logo which in turn had a raw, natural feel to it. I started drawing a simple bear shape because to children this would be the one general object that would offer them comfort and ‘safety’. I then went through a phase of having no eyes on the bear and then the nose and eyes making up the letters in ‘Comfort Box’. I tried mixing the logos with different colours but nothing really stood out to me. The brand name became lost within the logo.

Four logos with the most potential:

Further Development:

 

Experimenting with different mixed media and finally scanning it in. Tried changing the colours because they were too contrasting and harsh. Paler colours definitely work better for the tone of voice I want. 

The final logo was created using homemade ears using a softer fabric. I played around with the feathering tool to make the logo a lot softer than its original scanned in equivalent. The text, I used a scribbling technique but inverted it so it used the negative to show the letters. Overall,a all the styles used were chosen to make a softer and more friendly logo.

Branding My Box Idea

I needed to be sure who my target audience was to be able to start branding my boxes. I figured that for the 'fear of the dark' and 'fear of needles' boxes, these would be for young children. Whereas for the 'fear of flying' this could be for children, but usually children love the idea of travelling so it may be more targeted towards nervous adult flyers. I really wanted to link my boxes together so that they would become a collective. This would mean the graphic system would have to be simliar. At this point I decided to drop 'fear of flying' from my chosen phobias to look at and just concentrate on the other two.

After contemplating a number of brand names, I finally settled for COMFORT BOX. It is not too patronising but has a soft and friendly tone to the definition of ‘comfort’. I Can imagine a children’s product named this and something a parent would approve and want to buy for their child.

From this point onwards I started looking at different typefaces that could potentially work for the friendly tone of voice I wanted to get across:

My Chosen Fears

Fear of Flying

Fear of flying is common. Your own doctor can prescribe mild tranquiliser which can often assist the nervous flyer to overcome the anxiety associated with air travel. A number of organisations run special one day courses designed to reassure the apprehensive passenger and make the thought and act of flying a pleasant experience.

British Airways supports the course run by AVIATORS which includes a short flight of approximately one hour, conducted by a highly experienced BA training captain, following preparation by an eminent clinical psychologist.

As part of the ‘Aviators’ course I could create a box that the passenger can take on the hour flight to further help them overcome their fear of flying. Afterwards if they wish to do so, they can also use the box on real plane journeys so they can be comforted and content when facing their fear.

Fear of needles

Some people develop this fear as a result of a previous bad experience, for example it taking more than one attempt to find the vein. Others may have seen or read about injections or having blood tests and may have not fully understood what happens. It can also develop if negative feelings are picked up from someone else, such as a friend, brother or sister, or parent.

The PLAY SPECIALISTS of GOSH have a number of different ideas of how to tackle the problem. They have years of experience in preparing children for hospital tests, operations and procedures.

I could create a box that would distract children when they have vaccinations at school to make the experience more pleasant for them.

Fear of the dark

Children only start to be afraid of the dark from the age of about two when they start to understand the concept of fear, and their imagination develops sufficiently to picture the monsters under their bed.
A nightlight may be the perfect solution, but if they insist on keeping it light on, it may be more suitable installing a dimmer switch which can gradually be dimmed over time. It is important the child is able to get used to falling asleep with household noises. If the child is terrified of the dark, it is advised to tell them that it is very usual for people to be scared and then a safe night light can be installed.

I could use this opportunity to design a night light which can help children overcome their fear of the dark. It will need to be one that will gradually become dimmer as the night goes by to save energy and effort.

The Turning Point

After a number of tutorials about my facing fears idea, I decided that something still wasn't quite right. A lot of people's fears could be serious problems in their lives, thus I would need to be very sensitive about my target audience and how my tone of voice affected them. I did a survey, asking people of their phobias to get a better insight to how they come about and how they deal with it.

Not many people wanted to try to overcome their phobia. A lot of phobias came about by childhood happenings and physical experiences/encounters. It seemed that people just needed a boost of confidence from a peer to help guide them in the right direction.

I had only been looking at phobias as a negative and trying to think how I might help people overcome them via a packaged box. Maybe I need to start thinking of phobias as a positive, that it’s ok to be scared of something and that they should embace it.

Instead of researching random, crazy phobias like I had been doing up until this point I need to narrow my phobias down to ones that people can relate to (ie. quite common ones). 

Box Experiments

On the left shows me testing with different stock and materials and playing around with type. I quite liked the idea of cut out typography, it gives a friendly and welcoming tone of voice. Wire doesn’t work very well, although the idea of a style that looks hand-written could work. 

On the right page I started making mock-ups of the 2 door box. It was quite fiddly to put together because there were so many layers to take into account. Although the concept could have worked really well

Initial Idea

I began concentrating on the user experience of my packaging. Creating a containing that stimulating a number of sensory organs so it would become a memorable collectable and great piece of design. I wanted to use my work to change people's perception of certain subjects. Near the beginning of my project I was caught in a strut about wanting to change people's prejudice towards others, ie. stereotyping. Although it soon became apparently that trying to change something that was already so integrated within our community would be an almost impossible job.

After many tutorials I started to steer away from the idea of stereotypes and thought more about looking into people's fears. I wanted to encourage people to face their fears and try to overcome them. I would make a box which would challenge the users to see, touch, hear their fear, thus making them feel more immune to it. Here's an initial mock-up I did of my new idea:

The Concept:

I want to challenge people’s perception of fears and possibly change how or what emotions they associate with them. I will do this by creating conceptual packaging. The idea is that the packaging will not only act as a general container for something but also aim to evoke a certain emotion from the user. Parts of the packaging will be laser cut hopefully, allowing the user to have a peek at what’s inside before a surprising reveal. This will allow a number of viewing angles which in turn gives me the opportunity to have control of what the user sees and the variety of different images they view; thus potentially evoking a number of different emotions at the same time.

Example:

Container labelled ‘the fear of heights’ will include some serious and humorous imagery showing there are a number of different ways to view this phrase. For the serious imagery, the viewer will be forced to face their fear, as for the humorous images they will be taught to see the brighter side of their fear, which will hopefully make them feel more at ease about it.

Container labelled ‘the fear of monsters in your wardrobe’ will be designed in a way so that the user has to open a door before peeping through the window to see the imagery. The interaction of having to open the door is in itself an act of facing your fear already and the imagery behind each door will be a humorous take of the fear.

Extended Major Project- Setting My Brief

This was not my first time having to write my own brief having undergone my final major project in my second year of university. I started by breaking down the aims, learning outcomes and assessment criteria, asking myself what they meant to me and what I wanted to get out of my final unit. 


After a lot of contemplation and reflecting on my work the previous year, I soon found out that I wanted to look more into packaging design. This was an area I hadn't really explored much of but had wanted to research more on. I've always loved conceptual packaging and as a consumer, I have sometimes fallen into the trap of buying a product just for the packaging value. Some interesting packaging I came across during my research: