How reward­ing is it when you finally receive sam­ples of some­thing you designed? Whether it was fab­ric sam­ples with your pat­terns on them, a book you’ve illus­trated, paper items, or a whole prod­uct you designed, hav­ing the actual prod­uct with your art on it feels good. It’s a live proof of your achieve­ment!
You see the beau­ti­ful sam­ples, (some­times you nag about a cou­ple of things,) you proudly show them around and you take a quick photo to share on your blog or on Twit­pic. Then you move on with other projects.

Make time to take pro­fes­sional pho­tos of the items you design

I am learn­ing this les­son the hard way right now, and I decided to share it: Make time to take pro­fes­sional pho­tos of your fin­ished prod­ucts. I mean pro­fes­sional. If you don’t have the equip­ment or proper light­ing at home for awe­some pho­tos, hire some­one. A stu­dent build­ing a port­fo­lio, or maybe a friend; you must have a friend who’s a pho­tog­ra­phy guru… Invite them for lunch, and have them take amaz­ing, high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of the prod­uct you designed.

Com­puter designs are not enough

The final draw­ings you’ve cre­ated are (should be) nicely orga­nized in files on your com­puter, and can be kept there for­ever, but it is not enough. Hav­ing beau­ti­ful pho­tos of these pat­terns on fab­ric, or pho­tos of the actual box or pack­age you just designed is impor­tant for your port­fo­lio. Not quick “proof” pho­tos with your point-and-shoot cam­era. Beau­ti­ful, pro­fes­sional pho­tos, with proper light­ing and proper setup. Have I stressed this enough?

Why you might need these photos

Right now, I am wish­ing I had pro­fes­sional pho­tos of all the things I’ve cre­ated in the past 8 years.
Lately, I have been inter­ested in design­ing pack­ag­ing again. I have at least 3 full-time years of expe­ri­ence in pack­ag­ing and label design for dif­fer­ent prod­ucts; but now that I need to prove my skills to poten­tial pack­ag­ing com­pa­nies, I am real­iz­ing I do not have any nice pic­tures that I am proud to show.

I cre­ated pack­ag­ing designs and solu­tions for bath and beauty prod­ucts (soaps, sham­poo and lotion bot­tles, body and face prod­ucts), all kinds of cos­met­ics, sta­tionery and photo albums, among oth­ers. Some of the designs had matte/glossy effects, metal­lic print­ing, silk screen prints and mixes of mate­ri­als that no com­puter mock-up alone can gen­uinely show.

At these com­pa­nies I worked at, cus­tomers often came to our office to see the actual prod­ucts. We didn’t have to use pho­tos to sell the prod­uct, but more to remind them of the items they saw, on generic sales sheets. At that time, hav­ing pho­tos for my own port­fo­lio was the fur­thest thing from my mind. Now I wish I had thought of it. I loved my job; what I cre­ated was beau­ti­ful, yet I can­not show it to you!

I am now look­ing for note­books and bot­tles of beauty prod­ucts to mock up, make them look like what I had done and take pho­tos of them for my port­fo­lio. From now on, I will be tak­ing those pho­tos a lot more seri­ously. Wouldn’t you?

The fol­low­ing are exam­ples of prod­uct pho­tos of ran­dom items by great design­ers. Even if the design is fairly sim­ple or ordi­nary, I think the qual­ity of the pho­tos makes the prod­uct look so lux­u­ri­ous. Way to con­vince your poten­tial client of your skills!


Bot­tles & Boxes

Wine label by Mag­nus Hen­rik­sen & Aman­dus Bjerk, from Nor­way / Wine pack­ag­ing by The Cre­ative Method, from Aus­tralia
- These beau­ti­ful pho­tos make the bot­tles look so classy, and show the amaz­ing tex­tures used for the labels

Label and box design by Archival, from the U.S.
- It is nice to show dif­fer­ent angles of the item in the same photo if you have more than one sam­ple of it

Nat­ural cos­metic line pack­ag­ing design with embossed detail by Grupo Haber­mas, from Spain

Brand­ing and pack­ag­ing by Leong Huang Zi, from Malaysia / Pack­ag­ing by Madeleine Skjel­land Erik­sen, Mar­tine Bon­gard & Silje Nyløkken, from Nor­way
- Pho­tos are nec­es­sary to show the dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als used (opaque and translucent)

Honey label design by Jamie Nash, from Eng­land / Med­i­c­i­nal lotion labels by Touch Brand­ing, from the Czech Repub­lic
- Even though these designs are sim­ple, I think these pho­tos give them a lot more value

Cheese pack­ag­ing design by Coba & Asso­ciates, from Ser­bia / Book pack­ag­ing by Wes­ley Thomas, from the U.S.
- If there are spe­cial steps to open a pack­age, pho­tos of the steps are cru­cial and make the design clear


Tex­ture Close-ups

Embossed design by Anna’s Visual Bak­ery, from Hun­gary / Silk screen and embossed design by Effek­tive, from Eng­land

Tex­ture close-up, design by Touch Brand­ing, from the Czech Repub­lic / Embossed design by Mon­net Design, from Canada
- Add close-up pho­tos of spe­cial print­ing effects along with pho­tos of the whole prod­uct

Pack­age design with silk screen type by Coba & Asso­ciates, from Ser­bia / Busi­ness card design with multi-hue metal­lic print and embossed ele­ments, by We Made This, from Eng­land


Pat­tern Design

Burger wrap pat­tern design by Frode Skaren — The Met­ric Sys­tem, from Nor­way

Designs by two of my favorite sur­face design­ers:
Pat­terns for note­books by Diane Kappa from the U.S. (liv­ing in Hun­gary) / Pat­terns for a line of swim­suits by Wag­ner Campelo from Brazil


Books

CD and book design by Rethink from Canada / CD and book design by Visual Dia­logue from the U.S.
- Book designs could show your graphic tal­ents on the screen, but pho­tos of the actual fin­ished prod­uct show the final achieve­ment


Graphic Design & Prints

Event Brochure design by Vel­lut, from Spain / Brochure design by Touch Brand­ing, from the Czech Repub­lic
- Just like book designs, prints and mail­ers look nice on the screen, but more real and com­plete when they are printed and pho­tographed so nicely

Brand­ing design by David Arias, from Canada / Brand­ing design (enve­lope design) by James Kape, from the U.S.


Illus­tra­tion pho­tos

CD pack­age design and illus­tra­tion by Adam R. Gar­ica, from the U.S. / Sta­tionery line illus­tra­tions by Poki­dots!


If you have nice pho­tos of the items you designed any­where online, I would love for you to leave the URL in the com­ment sec­tion below so I could see them and maybe add them to this post. Don’t be shy! ☮