Tile Cleaner

Are your floor tiles dirty? And what about wall tiles? If they are, look no further -- our tile cleaner is all you need!

Ahem... sorry about that. It's called a designer's midlife crisis. Anyway, here's another label design for one of the oldest local brands of detergent products in Georgia. And don't believe the English inscription telling you that it's an "all-purpose cleaner" -- actually, its purpose is only to clean ceramic tiles, which is rightly indicated by the Georgian inscription reading "wall and floor tile cleaner." Why the difference? Well, I don't have a comprehensible answer to that question, so let's just say that inscrutable are the ways of the detergent manufacturers, especially in Georgia...

As for the technical details, the work has been done entirely in CorelDRAW X5. Commercial stock images have been used. And, of course, no detergent manufacturers were harmed during the production.

Dish-Washing Time!

Long time, no design. Time to fix that. With detergents, of course! So I'm presenting a new series of dishware cleaners from one of oldest detergent brands under my design: Eco+. Oh, and don't try to locate them on your local supermarket shelves -- unless you live in Tbilisi, Georgia, that is.

No FruitLab involved -- this time the client wanted me to use some real (and fresh) fruit photographs, so I had to buy them from Shutterstock, along with some new flatware. The rest is just the good old curves and bubbles, tried and tested many times before -- they always work with this kind of things...

That's MISTER Max for You!

In A Quick Rinse done last year I introduced MAX, a new brand of detergents from "100+1" -- my very first detergent customers. Guess what -- MAX is back! Only he's called MISTER Max now. Besides the name change, the container was also replaced, so I had to make a new outline to fit the depression in the plastic vessel. Also, strawberry was added to the three existing flavors.

The new design maintains the general direction of the original MAX labels, but there are certain differences, mostly brought in by the changed brand-name and the different shape.

And here's the actual product prototype (in this case, the digital versions of the labels placed on real containers):

But that wasn't all for Mr. Max. In fact, the most interesting part started right after finishing those labels, because now I had to design a mascot for another product under this brand -- a dish-washing gel also called MISTER Max.

I usually draw my mascots by hand and trace them digitally afterwards, but this one has been assembled in CorelDRAW from the scratch. He looks more like a Man in Black (right before erasing your memory with a Neuralyzer) than a detergent mascot, but I think he's still does his job as a "detergent barker" good enough -- you can see him in action below.

That's it for now, but I'll be back shortly with a couple of little heartbreakers. No idea what I'm talking about? Good! Stay tuned and you'll be the first to know.

A Quick Rinse

Yep, more detergents are coming your way. No no no, don't faint on me -- it ain't gonna be another Big Wash, just a quick rinse this time, I promise.

It was the first order I received after returning from my summer vacation, and it came from the customer who was behind my very first detergent labels back in 2006: a firm called "100+1" (the same name as their production). Only this time they decided to go with a new brand name: MAX. Naturally, the design also had to be different and fresh.

As before, the labels needed to be done in three different flavors, so I locked myself up in my FruitLab to breed some more of those "self-made" fruits. Since I already had a stock of lemons and oranges, I only needed to add some green apples to my "digital garden."

After tailoring the shape of the labels to the actual liquid container and designing the MAX logo, all I had to do was "stirring up" the background and adding some eye candy like pretty bubbles and shiny sparkles. And here it was: another fruity detergent in the best traditions of the genre.
But that's not all. A few days later I received a new "dish-washing" order from another regular customer: a private venture primarily using ECO+ brand for their production (those who had been fortunate enough to attend the Big Wash should be familiar with that name). The customer didn't want anything new this time, but rather to alter an existing label which we did earlier: a detergent balsam, featuring Diana's "glamoured" hand and a mascot character. The task was to change the shape of the label and replace the ECO+ brand with BEST. Also, the original label was a "solo project," and now it had to be done in three different flavors, as we usually do with other labels.

The FruitLab already contained the "raw ingredients" for the two of these flavors, but it didn't have any strawberries, so I had to design them from the scratch (which was actually fun: strawberries proved to be a very interesting fruit to "build," so to speak).

The "ECO+ girl" also had to undergo some changes: now she sported a new "sponsor's logo" on her apron (which effectively made her the "BEST girl"), and this new sponsor turned out to be quite generous, adding two new dresses to her collection to match the new flavors.
Usually I don't like redesigning the labels, because the new elements are often hard to fit into the existing arrangements. Fortunately, this wasn't the case here: the completely redesigned top part of the label matched the rest quite naturally.
That's it for now, but I'm sure there will be more episodes in this soap (or rather detergent) opera: my ever-competitive customers declared a real war on each other, which is certainly fine by me, as long as I remain the main weapon supplier for the both sides of the conflict...

The Big Wash

Georgia's household chemistry market heavily relies on import -- mostly from Russia, Turkey and Iran. The local manufacturers are only just making the first steps in this direction. Most of them are trying to give a "foreign" look to their products, since the majority of Georgian consumers do not quite trust the local chemistry goods yet.

I designed my first detergent label in 2006. It was named 100+1 and came in three different flavors (you can see the "green apple" version on the right). The brand name was a clever invention for the local market: at that time the label designation rules strictly required the main titles to be in Georgian (which was something highly undesirable for the household chemistry manufacturers), and the name 100+1 consisted only of numbers, which conveniently avoided using a Georgian title, while breaking no rules.

But not all the manufacturers were so clever. Some of them went on a shady path of disguising their products as foreign. The next order, which I received the same year, was precisely of this sort: I was required to make a bilingual label with primary designations in German and secondary in Russian, to mislead the customer into believing it was an original German product exported to Russia. Naturally, I protested with all my might, but my three wives and eleven children (numbers are slightly exaggerated for a dramatic effect) were starving to death, so I took my thirty pieces of silver and set to work.

The labels were called DamlaX (which is quite strange for a "German" product, since "damla" is a Turkish word, meaning "drop of water") and also came in three versions -- only this time divided not merely by flavors, but different scopes of application (glass, dishware, universal). Also, there was a small label for liquid soap.

That's when my first "detergent character" was born -- a cute girl with a big smile and even bigger frying pan, ready to be used as a tennis rocket with someone's head as the ball, if that someone tries to offend her (by refusing to buy the product, that is).

The "Damla-Girl" soon was followed by another character -- a mole, designed for a caustic soda label. Why mole? It's a long story, but to be short, there is an insanely popular Russian brand of caustic soda, named KROT (meaning "mole" in Russian), which uses a mole as its symbol. Traditionally, the mole is depicted wearing goggles and a miner's helmet, often climbing out of a pipe (since caustic soda is mainly used to cleanse pipes). This time the clients were strictly law-obedient: it was clearly a local product, with proper Georgian title and inscriptions.

Last year was very productive in regard of household chemistry labels -- I received a whole series of orders from a newly emerged private manufacturer. The first labels, going under the brand name UNIVERSAL+, were bilingual (Georgian-English), but the next series, named ECO+, dropped Georgian titles entirely, because by that time the designation rules had been somewhat softened, allowing to disregard Georgian, leaving it mandatory only in technical data -- such as usage, ingredients, validity terms, etc.



Soon after that I received a similar order from a different manufacturer. This time I had to invent the brand name myself, since the clients had no idea what to call their product. It proved to be quite a challenge, since all the good names had been already snatched away. I finally came up with SHINY, but it took quite an effort to convince the clients to use this name, because they had some reservations about the ability of an average local consumer to pronounce the English word properly. Anyway, the labels were done, and another character was born: a shiny, smiley and toothy drop with energetic thumbs up.


Then I returned to ECO+ brand, only this time with slightly different products: floor polish and glass cleaner. It was an entirely unexplored territory for me and I really enjoyed the work. In both labels I used the "wiping" effect, but achieved it differently in each case: in floor polish it was a simple gradient transparency, while in glass cleaner I used a more elaborate method, working with layers and filters to get the "wiped window" effect.

By the end of 2008 we gathered quite a bunch of ECO+ products. Below you can see them in all their glory -- actual containers with actual printed labels, exactly as they appear on supermarket shelves.
But the big wash wasn't over yet. This year I received several new orders from this manufacturer. The first was two series of liquid soap labels: one for transparent plastic bottles and another for semi-transparent plastic canisters. It was done in the "classic" manner of ECO+ detergents, already tried and tested in battle.


The second on the menu was a multipurpose whitener called Belizna -- another popular Russian brand (the word means "whiteness" in Russian). It was quite easy: a snow-white title against blue background (a winning combination), a little splash, some yummy bubbles... and done!
Then things got more interesting, because the next label required the creation of a new "detergent character" -- something like my Damla-Girl, only less headstrong. But before that, I needed a hand... literally. The client insisted that there had to be a hand image on the label, because it was a sort of "detergent balsam" with some protective additions for hands (glycerol, to be precise). Naturally, the hand should have been that of a female. I didn't have any suitable hands at my disposal, so I had to involve Diana, my ever-ready lifesaver, asking her to take some photos of her left hand and send them to me ASAP. After some trial and error, I received my hand, which was quite well-preserved, but still required a little "manicuring." I added some extra "glamour" with Portraiture Plugin for Photoshop and reversed the image, because I needed a right hand for my label, not a left one.

The hand fitted just perfectly, and now I switched to drawing the new character. Like in previous cases, first I drew the line art by hand, then I scanned it into the computer, traced it and finished in my graphics editor. The "Eco-Girl" came out a lot more likeable than her predecessor -- I really got my hand in making these cartoonish characters in the past few years. I added a slice of lemon and the work was done.

Now I had to make the final label from this set of orders. It was another caustic soda in the best traditions of our good old Russian KROT. Only this time the mole got bigger and stronger -- a real Super-Mole! The idea came to my mind, when the client asked me to help him with the name. He didn't want it to be just KROT, so I suggested to name it Super KROT, which means "super-mole" in Russian. It was time to create another character...

The new mole had the same helmet and goggles, and he also climbed out of the pipe, as you would expect from a mole of his profession, but this time... dressed in Superman costume (with ECO+ logo instead of the letter "S") and flexing a well-developed biceps.

As I was told, the color of the containers could be either yellow or green -- it wasn't decided yet -- so I chose the colors to match both. The combination of yellow and green looked nice and fresh. The work was done and everybody was just as happy with the results as the mole on the label...

That's the end of the big wash... for now. Hopefully, there will be more washing and cleansing in the future, because I find the process of designing household labels rather... refreshing.