I began the collaboration by meeting the hard working and energetic team at Elemis who talked me through some previous collaborations and showed me what was possible in terms of print and materials. They described the ingredients in the marine cream and, best of all, very generously gave me a goodie bag of products to try. (I have since become completely addicted to every product the brand have ever released but if you're not sure where to start, I would recommend the Superfood Oil and of course, the Marine Cream.)
I spent a bit of time in the library looking at vintage botanical illustrations of seaweed contained in the Marine Cream and researching the shapes and pantones. I love a challenge, and here, the hard part was getting as much impact as possible within a limited surface area. I limited the colour palette to just blues and greens, and worked on some rough colour sketches to mock up how these could look. I then fed my initial sketches and ideas back to the Elemis team.
Whilst my final designs are produced digitally, I always begin a project with a more traditional approach, favouring pencil sketches and brushy watercolours. I feel that these materials deliver a more instant result, quickly allowing the client an insight into the direction I'm thinking of heading in. When it comes to the final design, I still work largely by hand - I tend to produce artworks using fineliner pens which I then convert into digital illustrations. To add colour, I often create textures manually with scribbled crayons or brushmarks which I then scan to maintain a softer, more hand-drawn look to a finished design.
For the next stage of the project, I worked back and forth with Elemis, experimenting with different background colours of the design and its placement on the product itself. The design team were impeccable in their attention to detail and sampled the packaging several times before signing off on the final product. As a bit of a perfectionist myself, I found it really refreshing to work with a team who had the same level of neurosis about getting everything exactly the way they wanted it, right down to the tiny foil emboss on the seaweed leaves.
I'm so proud of this collaboration and it truly means a lot to have been given the opportunity to help raise money for such a vital organisation.
I really hope you like the design!
