Muddy's Grinds Package Design (Personal Project)

Right when I was about to graduate from high school I thought I wanted to major in graphic design. There was a little graphic design shop down the street from our house in Lakeland so I went and had a meeting with the owner and talked about what graphic design jobs actually looked like - portfolios, internships, all the things. I never actually studied graphic design specifically, but now when I think back on the advice he gave me HE WAS SO RIGHT. He had several pretty good points but the one I remember the most was this:

“When you’re making a portfolio, fake real work.”

It shows the world what it *can* be, not necessarily what it is. People can’t always imagine what you’re describing to them when selling them on a design, so you have to SHOW it to them - if you’re in a position to do your own “fake-but-real-looking” work, your portfolio is going to do the most for you. Consider it the creative “dressing for the job you want” perspective.

I’ve used that advice time after time and I’ve even recently talked about it on social media when I was talking about flat lays and wedding invitation designs! Since the wedding invitation game is pretty slow right now, I thought it could be fun to work on some faux-real-life (😂😂😂) projects with illustration work!!

They’re all designed with humor in mind while keeping the branding of Muddy’s Bake Shop here in Memphis - it was a fun exercise in illustration for the practical use. The “Seasonal Quarantine Collection” logo was created inspired by the Muddy’s logo - a whimsical hand written font. Large portions of hand lettered designs were paired relevant imagery to its’ theme. Each coffee grind flavor has it’s color theme, humorous product description as well as a “strength” bar for roast strength. The bar graphic is designated by “What Quarantine?”, “Hanging in There” or “Holy Cow Spike This.”

Quarantine Flavor:

Gnome More Toilet Paper

The first was “Gnome More Toilet Paper” in the traditional Muddy’s green sporting the play on words with their gnome theme. The sketch on the front of the package is pretty straightforward with whimsical illustration and the back has a little paragraph of humor and a “how bad is this” scale where the roast strength would usually be. The toilet paper shortage is definitely toward the more serious end.

Quarantine Flavor:

6 Loooong Months of Summer

Summer as a parent isn’t *quite* the glorious celebration it used to be. My littles are still small enough where we’re not worrying about homeschool math just yet, but nonetheless, it felt like 6 months of Summer deserved its mention in the faux Quarantine Collection of Coffee Grinds.

Quarantine Flavor:

Postponed Milestone or Event

This bag seemed like a no-brainer. Personally, we had a little virtual first birthday for Caroline to follow quarantine rules, but I’ve had clients postpone their wedding, had friends lose loved ones, heard of missing graduations - the list piles up so quickly. This is a pretty light hearted take on a heavy hearted thing. It sucks. Spike the coffee.

Quarantine Flavor: The Last of the Snacks

Armageddon at our house. Toddler life FULLY relies on the ability to bribe with snacks. I’m not even talking ‘bribe for picking up the playroom’. I’m talking ‘bribe for getting out of the dog bed’ or ‘bribe for coming inside so we don’t turn into one giant mosquito bite’ AND ‘bribe for stopping screaming even though we’re not sure why you started in the first place.’