Pien kars — Fruit Stickers
When I was a kid I always wanted the banana’s with the lady with the fruit hat, and I genuinely believed that the Pink Lady apples where the best just because there is a little hart on it. The cute little stickers on the fruits have always caught my attention, because I liked the color and the little drawings. But I had never really thought about why the stickers are used. During my analysis of this stereotype I found out quite some interesting stuff;mthat fruitstickers have been used since the 60’s, when consumerism was becoming really big. Back then the consumer packed their own products in plastic wrappings when doing groceries and a lot of them packed the fruit secretly into the wrong package so it looked like a cheaper product. Thus they began pasting the PLU stickers on the products, allowing the cashier to check whether the correct product was sold.
HOW TO FIT IN
1. TypeTo choose your typeface, first decide on if you want the sticker to give information about the fruit, ór if you want to sticker just to spread the name of your company.
If it’s the first, choose a clear typeface so it’s easy for everyone to read. Preferably a san serif typeface. You can add some color or a small image behind the text. On the sticker you can put the name of the fruit and the plu-codes in the chosen type. Maybe you’d like to put some extra text on there like ‘sweet and juicy’ or ‘seduce life’. Usually this is in the same typeface and a bit smaller under the name of the fruit.
For the second option, it’s preferable to choose the type based on the name of the company. If you choose for this option you can go all out and choose any random typeface you like and fits the name &/or fruit.
There’s also a secret third option and this is to just mix everything together; put all the information on there and also use type that fit’s the name of your company (take a look at Jazz- & PinkLady apples). Now you have a sticker that is informative and fun to watch! Great start!
2. ColorIf you want to use color on your fruitsticker think about the following:– what color does your fruit have; maybe it’s fun to repeat this is on the sticker.– what is the name of fruit your selling; very often there is a color in the name of the fruit (Pink Lady, Zespri Green, Golden Delicious). Connecting the name with the color will create a attractive visual.– do you want to use full color; sometimes it’s nice to leave the border of sticker white so it gives a clear distinction of where the fruit ends and the sticker begins.– what part of the sticker do you want to color; you can choose to just give the text some color, or to give the background a color. You can also only color the (optional) image, or just color everything.
Go crazy!
3. CompositionSince the sticker is small (22x17mm) you don’t have a lot of space to move things around. The most clear and easy is to put the name of fruit/company in the middle -big. Under/above this you should put the additional text (‘sweet&juicy’), or land of origin. If you have an image, make sure you put it half off it behind the text; then everyone gets it and it doesn’t take up that much space. Then the plu-codes (5 digits starting with an 9 means they are organically grown. But 5 digits starting with an 8, means it’s an GMO, and if the fruit has 4 digits it means it was grown with the use of pesticides); these can be put anywhere where you have some left over space. Not too difficult, is it?
Well there you go, let’s design some fruit stickers!