Student Spotlight: Lindsey Faye Sherman

Lindsey Faye Sherman is a graphic design student at Maryland Institute College of Art. She sent in this packaging for a gourmet dog treat line.

"Barkley's Doggy Style Dog Treats wasconceptualized and designed for the sophisticated gourmet shopper. Oneof the initialconcepts for the Barkley's packaging was the uses of innovative techniques such as the vivid favornames and visuallyappetizing images, to lore in the owner of the dog and their senses, rather then the dogs them selves. Remember,who is really buying the product anyway, the dog or his master? 

I used this fresh avenue of design todrive my basic propose of sale, which was to get the person excitedabout the shopping fortheir dog and the sensory experience of it all. This unusual approachI believe will enhance my selling line and heighten the differences among my product in comparisonto all the other dogtreat lines on the shelf today.  

With Barkley's design combination ofphotography, vector, and white space, I chose to emphasize the color,texture and sensoryelements of the raw products themselves. In doing this I believe the emphasis highlights the right componentsof the packagingto visually say natural and gourmet to the consumer, with out saying it literally. 

In the light of semiotics, I chose toexpress my design system with the idea of slight change however usingits complimentary oppositionof unity and consistency as a supporting element. In the Barkley's system, the elements that changethroughout thedifferent products are the foods that make up the bone shapes, flavor names and the duo color choices.Even though allthese elements have changes they are complimented by the consistent layout design, which creates aunity among them all.Barkley's doggy style dog treats; I believe would make a very nicecompetitive product in the gourmet dog treat industry."