Celebrations Street - Halloween box

Halloween treats box created for "Celebrations Street" Halloween series for the Coordiration store last year, and which turned out to be a surprisingly popular product. Here's a closer look of the layout and it's features.

Above: the texts on the box labels are fully editable to fit each customer's own intended purposes. To create the effect of elements going over the customizable type, the layers of the layout were saved in separate files, piled on several layers in the store system's own design tool and the type was then placed in between the wanted layers.
Below: the stripped out bottom layers of the layouts for the orange and 'dark' color choices.

Celebrations Street - Halloween

Customizable Halloween items in three coordinating colors for you to pick and choose your favorites to adorn your party. Selection of matching invitations, treats and candy, party favor boxes and gift bags, table settings, fabric, games and all the things you need for a terrific Halloween party!

Kawaii Clara - Christmas

New collection of Kawaii Clara in Coordiration and Marukuki stores:

Kawaii Clara - Christmas

with a sweet and plentiful selection of personalizable goods for seasonal decorating and for gift giving.

Kawaii Clara - Thanksgiving

Introducing new series for Coordiration and Marukuki stores:

Kawaii Clara

with a sweet and plentiful starter collection for Thanksgiving.

Panditas

Character, logo and packaging designs - including typography - for candy store Sweet Town's label Panditas (later "Dubbi").

Two large marshmallow bags got made - the "Paratiisivaahto" one above and the "Sydänvaahto" one below (with the blue cloud and the red heart as placeholders for the windows to be left clear on final products). Haven't seen these big bags around anymore in about a year (if anyone sees them somewhere, please let me know), but these little ones Sweet Town has in their own store bare the same graphics (excuse the crappy shot, but kinda exciting to have your package design hanging next to Rovio's Angry Birds *haha*).

Some time after the initial marshmallow bags, this purple licorice marshmallow one appeared in stores, decorated with a black variation of the "Panditas" bear someone had altered from my original illustration (as flattering as it is, this was done without consent, I'm afraid).

Panditas logo and usage guide. Unfortunately this logo never got used in the end - the name got changed before the packages went to production. I would later re-purpose this typeset style for the logo of my 're-imagining' of Lego's Fabuland project.

The actual bags - here you can see the windows in practice as well as the Panditas logo strip on the top of the bag re-designed and replaced by a third party after the name change to Dubbi. The Panditas, "little bears" couple - slightly cowboy themed "bandits".

Sweet Town

Candy store SweetTown's paper bag. The ship you see floating in the background was modelled after none other than the world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas (and her sister Oasis), that was getting build right next door to me on the Perno ship yards in time of this illustration's conception. I've used the ship on numerous other projects afterwards as my go-to backdrop ship (latest of which was for this very recent sailor themed Hello Kitty shirt - the most prominent appearance of it thus far as well).

My biggest regrets with these visually has always been, that I didn't dare redesign the original logo enough - only retouched a bit what someone else had created - and even more, that I didn't replace the used Dom Casual typeset entirely - thought it would be useful to keep to somewhat tie in with the store's existing brand image material, and for the ease of compatibility, if issues arose somewhere along the production line (one of the things you come too aware of wwhen orking in a position with loads of ads coming in every day, each using their own set of obscure designer fonts).

Sweet Town's current bags, while not my design, still use some of the elements I drew (without consent, I must point out) in a stylistic hodgepodge with other 'clip art'. I do like the new logo typeset much better though. Also have had couple of these 'moments' on public transportation and around the town: nothing more gratifying than seeing your product is getting used *haha*

125 x 90 mm sized ads for newspaper print. As usual with small businesses, there's quite a lot of info to scramble in an affordable ad space. It has its own certain kind of satisfaction and challenge I've grown to like to get something pretty done of such 'tight mess', and I often compare it to playing Tetris - every piece has to fit in just so without much if any white space to spare.

One of the characters I never got to introduce - a giraffe, I figured would've been well suited to promote the store's high quality. These projects left me with a pretty sizable library of sweets and snacks elements, which I've been yearning to put to some further use. Beginnings of title and box art for "Monkey's Daydream" (chocolate banana candies iirc) and an illustration for a mixed toffees bag.

"Lakrissa" I called the first of the characters I came up with, a liquorice legged cat. Then came "Ape", and "Nuts" was the squirrel's name 'unofficially' (not that any of the names were anyhow 'official' anywhere outside my own head anyway).

Fabuland logo

In 2011 I was musing myself with the thought of revitalization of Lego's Fabuland series.

Though my set and packaging designs remain in unfinished state to this day, I did complete this logo for the series - one which I'm immensely fond of. Also drew few of the characters with a bit more modern touch to be used on box art and 'marketing'.

Otso Salkkari - advent calendars

Advent calendar for Christmas 2009 - with the added fun of 'hidden' uses of the 'reader' graphic elements from the Salon Seudun Sanomat logo on the fire place grill and the bench.

SSS marketing team's annual advent calendar / sweepstakes campaign between years 2008-2012 for Salo local businesses and entrepreneurs, featuring Otso Salkkari the yellow bear mascot of the daily newspaper Salon Seudun Sanomat. Each day a flap could be opened, revealing a sweepstake number and the logo of a gift sponsoring business.

The fun and challenge of this project each year, was coming up with ways to prominently (and equally) display the logos under each flap and coordinating the overall illustration accordingly.

Click images to view how the illustrations would appear with the calendar flaps opened to reveal the logos.

Jansson

One of the 12 sets of Christmas card templates designed for Coordiration store:

Jansson

Sweet Scandinavian charm. Jansson offers four well coordinating colors for you to mix and match your very own, yet perfectly matching set of delightfully retro spirited mailings. The highly customizable templates allow you to add your own photos and write messages and greetings for complete personalized touch. Delight your family and friends with a whim of nordic retro sweetness and childhood nostalgia.

Photography © Storytree Studios, Stanford, CA.