Some of the Smarties products I have worked on through the ages for Rowntree Mackintosh Ltd and Nestle UK Ltd note the change of logo and background colour.
Can you tell the pre digital airbrush painted Smarties from the Illustrator vector blend Smarties?
Can you tell the pre digital airbrush painted Smarties from the Illustrator vector blend Smarties?
For childrenI've been fortunate to be able to work on many projects where thinking like a seven year old was the main the criteria.
The wealth of work that was produced specifically for children during the Golden Age of Illustration, particularly the work of such greats as Arthur Rackham and Ivan Bilibin, was a major factor in my choice of career path at the age of 15. Being banned from reading the Beano as small child also had something to do with it, and I think the hours I spent surreptitiously delighting in Leo Baxendale's excellent 'Bash St Kids' in my cousins copy of that subversive comic has stood me in great stead. Smarties and MilkybarI started working on Smarties packaging back in the days when the artworks were all drawn and coloured by hand using an airbrush - none of those Illustrator vector blends. Each Smartie colour had to be mixed to an exact colour match. The paint medium was gouache, and the colour matching was all done by eye referring to Pantone colours and adding a bit of red, bit of white, even a bit of black sometimes until the test colour - when it dried - was just right, after which the paint was stored in a large airtight pots so it didn't dry out.
Then the drawn elements of the packaging design including all the Smarties and any character illustrations, for example chickens, rabbits, pirates, clowns etc., was carefully and accurately drawn, using a 6H pencil on to a huge sheet of Frisk CS10 art board. It was necessary to create the artwork at least 25% larger than the finished print size so the final result would appear 'tighter and sharper'. Using five or six different ellipse templates a variety of Smarties shapes could be drawn, the total number of shapes could then be divided up into the eight Smarties colours so an even distribution of each colour could be achieved across the artwork. |