Working in Illustrator

With this assignment, I felt as if I had been thrown in the deep-end. I'd never used Illustrator before, thankfully I've had enough time to get to grips with it and have been able to produce something that I'm pleased with; It's a bit of a step-up from the usual Photoshop drills.

Some technical logging

From the very beginning I knew that I wanted to do something slightly different to other ideas my peers were throwing around, which required a bold choice when starting the practical work. Previously, we had been taught to create the package sides separately, and then turn them into symbols ready for joining in a separate document. Simple overlapping elements such as boxes traversing from the front to the sides of the package could be made by using guides, and rulers on the art-board, but what I wanted to do was have an overlapping radial gradient which flowed from front, to sides, to top and bottom.

Example:

In the end, I worked out that I could draw my box's net on one art-board and give each side a base colour before creating a gradient from a source, which would overlap them all.

Example:

The source of the gradient (the brighter glow which emanates from the front) flows over the front and onto the other sides, as you can see. Once I was happy with the set base colour for what was going to be my sides, I turned them into symbols and began to edit them independantely.