Zego Foods “Sunny Day Bars”

For this Zego Foods project, we wanted to create a fun look for their “Sunny Day Bars” that would appeal to young kids and their parents. The goal was to highlight the extra vitamin D in the bars using friendly fruit characters. I collaborated with designer Lauren Hart to create illustrations for the new packaging. After completing the project, I also developed a section for their style guide and put together a media kit featuring the artwork. The product was a finalist for a NEXTY award at the Natural Product Expo West show.

“Martha brought a wonderful combination of design talent and organization to our packaging project. She was the illustration part of our team and worked very effectively with everyone. Her designs are refreshing, happy, and eye-catching, just what we were looking for.” — Colleen Kavanagh Founder, CEO, ZEGO Foods

Mood Boards

At the beginning of each project, I gather a collection of images known as mood boards, which include pictures from the client, the competition, and any relevant visuals I've found. During this project, the client expressed a desire to showcase the sun and characters soaking up Vitamin D. Utilizing mood boards helped us swiftly agree on a direction, which was especially crucial due to budget constraints.

Roughs

In initial sketches, I typically don't include color, but we made an exception for this project since we were using the Zego brand colors the characters were so simple. It made sense to explore it early on. I suggested emphasizing sunglasses to highlight the client's unique selling point and offered three directions-

1. Sunglasses emphasising the clients unique selling point of vitamin D

2. Just the fruit- extremely simplified features for quick flavor recognitioin

3. Cute factor- Huge eyes to catch your attention as you walk down the isle.

Style Explorations

After some focus testing the big eyes appealed most to both kids and adults. Next was refining the rendering style and characters. I also directed the eyes to be looking at the products unique selling point about the vitamin D.