Overview
This piece is essentially a pasta box packaging design for a theoretical pasta brand. Similar to my The Vault project, the main focus of this project was a bit of branding, and a bit of package design. The basic goal was to develop a new pasta brand, complete with a logo, fonts, colors, and a pretty new package to sell the product in theory.
The Brand
After hearing about this assignment, I knew that I wanted to do something out of the box and new. My mind immediately started racing, thoughts being filled with a plethora of ideas and I eventually landed on the concept of a minimalist pasta company that sells black squid ink pasta for seafood dishes. This brand would eventually claim the name Atramento, meaning ink in Latin.
The brand would also follow a color palette of strictly shades of black and white to carry a modern and minimalist aesthetic. This color scheme would also accent the deep black color of the Atramento signature squid ink pasta.
The Logo
After landing on a solid brand foundation, it was finally time to get started on the logo design. I had lots of different logo ideas and sketches but it didn’t take long to sift through them and find the winner. The new Atramento logo comes in both black and white variants, and features a symbol-mark, word-mark, and combo-mark.
The symbol-mark is based around the concept of a minimalist trident with spaghetti on it, resembling a fork. The symbol-mark also features a double loop design to encompass the trident and keep the overall design tidy for placement on packaging and promotional materials.
The word-mark catches your attention with the bold “Atramento” and carries your eyes upward to read a lighter “Squid Ink Pasta”, nestled between the t’s. For this part of the logo, I chose to use the font Coquette, designed by Mark Simonson, because it is sleek, elegant, modern, and has those nice curvy parts that could almost resemble a spaghetti noodle.
The Packaging
With the new logo completed and out of the way, the only think stopping me from designing the final product packaging, was that I needed to know what kind of pasta I’d be selling before I could make the box. I weighed my options, and decided to go with linguini because I thought a longer box would be more interesting to design, and in my personal opinion, linguini goes better with seafood than spaghetti.
Designing the box actually turned out to be a lot of fun, and it was a very rewarding experience to see it all come together. One of the hardest parts however, was finding a way to add more personality and brand flair to the box. I accomplished this by scattering little nautical embellishments throughout the design, such as sea shells, sand dollars, and starfish. This also carried the point across that this pasta is marketed for use in seafood dishes.
Conclusion
After countless hours of work, this project came to an end, and I have to say, it is something I am very proud of. From the beginning, I chose to take a non traditional route, and it turned out to be a very rewarding experience. If I ever decided to quit being a graphic designer, and start a pasta company, this would be a great place to start.
