Earlier this year I was hired my the good folks at RPM Connect in Minneapolis to illustrate some Christmas canisters for Orville Reddenbacher’s “Poppycock” brand. The snacks are now available in stores. I picked up my first few canisters in Target but I’m sure other stores will be carrying them as well.
The folks at RPM Connect were great to work with. By the time I was brought onto the project the general concept had already been decided on but the exact style of illustration was still under discussion. They wanted a series of vignettes around the bottom of the can. Something flat, graphic, not very cartoony, and probably monochromatic. Also, the client had incorporated some snowflakes-and-trees clip art into the mockup and I was asked to try to incorporate those elements into my final illustration. Whatever I did couldn’t deviate too far from that “look”.
Given those parameters, I worked up a few samples to try and nail down a possible style for the illustration:
Normally my work is very cartoony so it was a lot of fun to push myself in another direction and play around with styles and colors I wouldn’t normally use. Ultimately the client chose Option #2 (the one in the upper right) and that’s the style I went with. Here’s the final illustration:
From there the agency added in the logo and other graphic elements. The final result is now available in stores:
