CrÃ¨me Mains

So we decided it might not be a bad idea to extend La Société Parisienne de Savons line with a quality hand cream with high concentration of natural shea and coco butter, no paraben, no phenoxyethanol...."in order to be in the mood of the eco-cosmetic wave".

Learning that the minimum order quantity for a 30ml tube was 10,000 pieces per design, we realized that 20 designs would require and order of 200,000 tubes, which is ambitious not to say crazy, so we opted for a single house brand.

I made one request, that we use an actual metal tube instead of the ersatz, encased in plastic, "metal-looking" tubes that are so prevalent and so boring today. So what if it gets crinkly and wrinkled as it gets used up. Perhaps we may even revive the lost art of rolling the tube up from the end. Hopefully, there are still a few old-timers left who could teach us.

Stay tuned for the next post to see how this stuff looked at the Paris Gift show last week.

In keeping with the vintage appeal of the brand, the concept was to use an illustration instead of a photograph on the package. We could have made it more realistic but, I really loved (stole actually) the kind of awkward, hand-rendered, imitation drawing of a metal tube.

Real metal tubes! Just they would have been before the world became immersed in flexible plastic.

Various color schemes were explored to find a balance between retro styling and a product that would easily be associated with health and beauty.

I normally draw all my own typography (except where there's a chance to use Copperplate or Bureau Eagle) but, here I found a perfect fit for Cooper Medium, a much lesser-known cousin to that ubiquitous classic from the 70s, Cooper Black.

Ah, the excitement of seeing your work becoming a reality.

Rough doodles to get a feel for the connection between the tube and packaging.

Original sketchbook page. I probably procrastinated on this for almost a month but, when I finally opened the book and started drawing, I knew just where it was going. BTW, the characters ticked off and numbered on the right hand side are just a way to find the midpoint when I want to draw centered words.

An early exploration (in faux metal) to see how the soap labels might apply to tubes before we learned of the madness it would entail.