Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Spiderman Band-Aids


I’ve been buying Spiderman band-aids for the majority of my life, but I never really thought about the design aspect of them. Obviously the images are based off of the cartoon, but an illustrator/designer had to adapt the character to create a dynamic pose for the box as well as a few variations for actual bandages. ­ There are a few constraints in the creation of these images. A limited color palette of essentially blue and red with a few yellow highlights helps the consumer to easily identify the Spiderman character. I’m curious whether the illustrator did the typography as well because it would be a lot easier to have complete control over the design of the package, but it very well could be that an illustrator presented their image and then a graphic designer incorporated the typography. I’m not sure if the same person illustrated the package as well as the bandages. The smallest of the three band-aids has a very similar aesthetic to the package, but the larger two are a bit more complex and have a much darker style, so it could be that a different illustrator designed the band-aids. Whoever the artist is, clearly their style is appealing since I know I’m not the only one using these band-aids and the whole reason I buy these ones in particular is for the design. It must be a fun job to take famous characters and reinvent them for products!

2 comments:

  1. I've never thought of an illustrator's job as creating bandages. It's interesting to look at these and realize that even things simple as bandages can have their own style-as you note that there might be more than one illustrator working here.

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  2. I feel like the designer might have been given these set of images from a stock collection was told to "just put it together". In that case, I applaud the designer for making it seem like there was an illustrator involved. But that is just me guessing what happened.

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