Enamel Pins

This weeks task was to design three enamel pin badges, which had to be inspired by a pop culture reference. The brief outlined that we had to create 3 enamel badge designs, using a cohesive visual language across the set, create a backing card design, as well as a Logo / branding for the collection.
The only 'rules' we had to follow was to limit our badges to 4 pantone colours and that the  badges should be based on an existing pop culture property, which we could choose to parody or pay homage, created in a style of our own devising.

Enamel Pin Inspiration

Thumbnails: 

I always start my design process by creating thumbnails, as they allow me to see what ideas are successful and which ones need more work. It also helped me to visualise how I could use the same four pantone colours throughout my designs to create a cohesive visual language. 

Enamel Pin Designs 

I felt that a lot of my initial pin designs were quite simple, as it was my first time using illustrator and I was just getting to grips with how to use the different tools and effects. 

Initial Mock Up Designs

I found that these mock ups appeared rather clunky and unfinished which was not what I wanted to portray. I actually found that the designs on my backing cards were more ambitious and would make good badge designs. 

Final Complete Mock up

These final mock ups of these complete enamel pin badges and backing cards convey the many things I have learnt from this project, including using illustrator and how to make a 2d design feel much more tangible by adding simple things like cast shadows and adding a hanging tab to my backing cards. 

To further improve on this project, I should have added a website or Instagram link on the bottom of my backing card, as it is so important to market your website, as people will visit it to look at designs and then if they like it, buy things from you and share your work with their friends. Overall, I ended up really enjoying this project and would love to one day design and sell my own enamel pin badges. Things I struggled with most was using illustrator I found it difficult to locate and use the different short cuts that would have made things easier for me, however I watched a lot of YouTube videos which helped inform my practice and in reality the more you use a specific software the better you get so I look forward to my next illustrator project with a lot more confidence in my abilities.