While doing the bag templates for the bakery before, I'm not sure why I chose to put them on white templates because the bags that I'm going to be using are made of brown paper. So I changed the colour of the templates and went through a few layout options.

The plan was to use only one colour plus stock, so to print directly onto the bags would mean that any text that I wished to be white would be brown and the small text underneath the logo would be completely lost on the bag. So, not a good idea.



The word 'bite' works much better on the bag in the single colour quite large, though it works better, I already know that this is not the route that I want to take. I much prefer the round logo with the address and contact information on it which doubles as a business card.



Using the round logo again, I have kept the white this time which means, because printing white is not an option for me unless I want to faff around with screen printing, which I do not want to do, the logo needs to be a sticker. This works out very well in face, for printing stickers is easy, and they can be applied to a wide range of media. This works out much better because it saves having to print directly onto each item and keeps things easy. Another bonus is that stickers can now be printed 100% biodegradable that there is not worry of them causing harm to the environment.

Using these general bag templates that I created and printed out before so that I could draw rough ideas onto them, though this time I'm using them on Illustrator to try and create a series of layout options quite quickly.


I sort of alternated between the circular bite logo and just using the type, using the colour that I explored before. I played with sizing and position and turning things upside down etc. I just wanted to generate some layout ideas quite quickly.










Overall from the exercise my favourites are the ones with the circular logos, though not oversized, the small ones that simply sit nicely on the design.


Using the same designs for paper bags that I did before in purple, I changed them to my chosen colour just to see how they would look. Though in truth, of all the bag options that I used on the above images, the only thing that really needs a logo on it is the main carrier bag. I don't think that the paper bags need to have anything printed on them at all, if anything I believe that it would be a waste of ink and money, and that's just not ethical.

I honestly do not know what struck me about the colour purple. Perhaps I'm having a bit of a purple week. My identity has taken a bit of a turn for the purple as well. I think it's a very regal looking colour and gives the impression of quality so I suppose I was trying to convey the quality feel of the food by using the colour purple. I can quite safely say that it isn't working.

Colour aside, I quite like some of the layout options that I have presented here for paper bags. I quite like the idea of having the edge of the bag 'bitten off' rather than the zig zag cut of most paper bags. Something to play with, anyway.

I decided that it was time to get a little more hands on with this bakery brief and have a bit of a stock test. I recently found this company that sells paper made from elephant and rhino dung and I bought a selection of papers from them. Cheap as chips and quickly delivered. They do seed paper but only in A5 sheets, which is fairly rubbish for using for anything but quite useful for doing fold tests and the like. Anyway.

I didn't use a net for these bag designs, in truth I find those really awkward and far too complicated to make what they do. I just wrapped the paper around a box shape and closed one end like you would wrap a present. Then add the side folds and it collapses down flat quite nicely. I may post a little tutorial just to show my process. Way easier than using a net. I used nets for bags when I was doing my Homebase brief last year and I spent way too long making each bag when I made each one in less than a minute this time around.

This paper is made from elephant dung. It's mainly an off white with little flecks in it, the photo doesn't really do it justice. To the touch it's just like thin card, it folds nicely, though it really isn't obvious as to what it is without it being said. 'This bag is made from elephant dung' or something like that and I don't really want to go along that route.

This stock is a handmade paper bought at the Salts Mill during my trip with Carl at the end of last year. It's nice and textured, yellow with sort of orangey flecks inside of it. It's quite thick and has a sort of flock-like texture to it, it's very soft and springy and doesn't really fold crisply.

The above bag is made from stock that I've kept for some time. It's less like paper and more like a mesh of threads made from banana fiber. It's very rough to the touch and can be quite sharp. In truth, it stabbed me a fair few times while I was making it into a bag. It doesn't fold down all that well and double sided tape doesn't seem to hold it closed too well. It was awkward to work with, and while I adore it as a texture, it's really not practical and can be quite painful to handle. So, absolutely unsuitable. The texture of it is amazing but it's really not something that is practical in a printed design. I bought this back on my Foundation course when I was all about sketchbooks as a piece of design in themselves. In a way, I kind of miss working like that, but I'm a much better designer now and don't get bogged down in presenting the back up work as aesthetically as the product.


Paper made from coffee filters. It has a very slight coffee scent to it and has a marbled effect on the surface. Again it's very thin, about as thin as normal printer paper and folds quite nicely. Being that it's very thin, it's not very strong and couldn't really hold much. Also, the company only sells it in sheets of A4, which is rubbish!

Cannot remember for the life of me what paper this is, I'll have a look when I get home later.


Same company again, this time the paper is embedded with grass. Not grass seeds,which is what I was looking for, but blades of grass. It has quite a nice, earthy and natural feel to it and is as thin as computer paper, so folds down nice and crisply but isn't very strong.





The above bag is made from paper embedded with wildflower seeds, which is what I was originally looking for. I would have loved some filled with grass seed but apparently they only sell that in America and the shipping costs would murder me. Ellie Poo Paper only had sheets of it in A5, but I found a wonderful seller on Ebay who sells it in sheets of larger than A2 straight off the deckle. Very useful as we can only print on it on sheets of A3 at the least down in the digital dungeon. It's very thick so I was quite surprised when James said that he could print on it. Anyway. It's not the cheapest thing in the world and it's quite thick and very strong. Constructing a bag out of it was quite a feat as it kept springing back and trying to hit me in the face, though when it was done I thought that it looked quite effective.

It's quite a lumpy stock, obviously as it's full of seeds, but it looks and feels very handmade. When I was making this bag instead of having a straight cut edge at the top I would leave the deckle edge there and keep it quite rough. I made handles out of raffia, in truth quite a weak material unless you use stacks of it.

It was mentioned in the crit that it doesn't look like something that would be cheap to produce, and it's not, so while it looks really nice and quite 'eco' I either need to scrap it in favour of something more finance friendly or change the brief and make it a really high end, expensive bakery.

As seen in the bottom image I also played briefly with the idea of instead of printing on the bag, just printing little tags to hang from the bag that doubles as a business card.

Circular stickers anyone? The e just doesn't look enough like an e so I don't think that I'm going to be using this. Back to the other shapes! Time to crack on!

I've done squares, thought I'd try my hand at circular logos while I was messing about with the idea of having the word with the bitemark rather than the shape. The only thing I can see them working as is stickers but then they won't fit in quite as well with the rest of the branding if they don't have the bitten word. Gyahhhhhhh.

this kuler colour pallette offers a much nicer range of browns than I was working with before.

Ehhh I went back and had one last play with the idea of taking the bites out of the word itself using the typeface I adapted. Out of all of these, I do like the top-left hand one. I'm not sure what it is about it however, it just doesn't quite read 'bite' with the chunk taken out of it. I think it's because you lose a part of the letterform.

Igonoring the colours, I was just messing about, I explored the difference between landscape and portrait. While I like the portrait ones, I think that the landscape ones just seem more appropriate and they look better. I also prefer the smaller bite to the corner as opposed to the larger ones. It just looks more subtle.

Again just playing around in illustrator with the idea of the business card having a corner bitten off via die-cut. I was just experimenting with the colours again here though it needs some serious tweaks.

I like the ones with the bite out of the top-right hand corner.

I've decided to situate my hypothetical bakery on Blenheim terrace next to the uni where all the other food shops are, so I want mine to really stand out amongst the others.

These a just a few initial ideas for business cards. Like the logo, I like the idea of having the bitemark taken out of the business card as opposed to out of the type. Obviously I would cut the mock ups by hand but professionally these would have to be die-cut. Snazzy.

Playing around with both landscape and portrait layouts. I'm leaning more towards the landscape one myself.

There was another idea to have the business card make up the letter head. By doing this the business card would be whole, no bites or anything, and have the little slots on the letterhead that you slide the card into on opposite corners to hold it in place would be shaped like the bite marks so while the card was in there it would give the illusion that it had been bitten. But I'm unsure about this.