Pre-design Work & Inspiration

Pre-design Work

1. Known Information of MX mooncakes

• there are many kinds of logos on the website
• the simple history of MX mooncake
• general font of name and time (but I'm thinking about changing a font)
• no general colour
• some patterns from MX mooncake boxes 
• mooncake ingredients: French Butter, coconut cream, whipping cream and supreme salted egg yolks. 

logos

2. Deadline: before Friday

3. Content of Packaging

• MX logo
• time 
• Chinese & English name of the mooncake
• some patterns (butterfly, flowers, hill, water, rabbit, moon, the goddess in the moon)
• other product information

 4. Search & Change materials

• natural & traditional Chinese patterns, such as butterfly, flowers, hill, water, lantern, rabbit, moon, the goddess in the moon, and so on.
• elegant colour atlas
• suitable font 
• suitable composition proportion
• good & bad example & theory of packing design
• good poster of packaging design

Inspiration

1. Inspired by Mooncakes packagings of MX:

Material: MX mooncakes have two common packaging materials. I choose cardboard in this design.

metal boxes 

cardboard boxes

Modes of the packaging: According to the above pictures and my experience, there are three modes of the packaging I list. I choose the first one.

three modes of packaging(possible) 

Packaging layers & layout: According to some pictures of  MX  mooncakes cardboard boxes, there are eight surfaces in the outer packing.

Including:

• the top: a pattern,  the axial symmetry layout & local variation
• the button or side: a very small area including some product information

two layouts of the  top(possible) 

the bottom & sides of layouts (possible)

2. Inspired by Other sources

Style: After searching for some pictures from some kirigami art on websites, I found that the pattern of paper-cut style gives people a three-dimensional and rich feeling in the vision. 

Shanxi paper-cut

This is exactly the kind of holiday effect I want to create on the packaging. I decided to try to this style.

Composition of pattern: According to the style above, I  choose three possible kinds.

• line 
• colour filling 
• the sand painting

Elements of the main pattern & Fronts: After looking at some pictures of paper-cut online, I try to identify some possible elements blew.

butterfly & the goddess in the moon & fronts

Colour: According to the ingredient of mooncakes and the time of year when people eat them--on Mid0Autumn, I  think of three couple of colours. I may choose the second one.

• (may) light yellow and dark yellow, the symbol of the moonlight or filling
• (may) silver and mazarine, the symbol of the night
• (may) light yellow and deep red, the symbol of the festival

Reference

some element of patterns: website（detailed reference after the supplement)

Ps: The next post will illustrate some of the problems that mooncake box design should avoid through some bad examples.