Maxime Quoilin is a 21 years old that will soon be graduated Computer Graphic Designer. He is from Belgium and although he is pretty new to the game (as his own words), for this last year he has increased even more his design interest. He really likes digital design and wants to end up doing advertising posters since that's what he likes most. To graduate, Maxime had to work on a big project where he created a fictive energy drink brand. He presented the project this week and we will show it here to you.

I first bumped into Maxine's piece when searching for my daily inspiration images, and I actually mentioned his work at our Daily Inspiration #220. And 2 days after I mentioned the piece he contact us to post the image as an inspiration, so I told him that I had already publish it and ask if he agreed on showing us the whole process of the work since the piece was so nice. Maxime agreed and here we are, showing you the creative process of his final year project.

Make sure to check out Maxime's portfolio at Behance.

I also would like to thank Maxime for his attention and kindness during the process of putting this post together. Enjoy!

So, I present Maxime's work and words!

First of all, let me explain that we were free to do pretty much whatever we wanted as a final year project. Friends of mine made the whole design of a fictive music festival, a magazine or even some kind of basketball event. For my part, I decided to create an energy drink because it allowed me to work on various domains such as branding, creating a corporate identity, packaging, or even creating advertising posters. I’m going to try to summarize my reasoning as much as possible.

So I wanted to create something rather fresh, rather new and with a clean image. I wanted to avoid several clichés associated to energy drink brands such as an aggressive image (bulls, monster claw, etc) or a not-so-healthy image. I’m not a chemistry master but I was thinking about something without taurine or guarana.

Therefore, I was going to use some guidelines for the logo and the entire stationery or advertising job. I used the blue color (color of harmony and trust, but that also symbolizes the water and the freshness) and the white color (color of cleanliness and purity). The drink is still an energy drink, so I still had to give an image of power. I did that by using a certain amount of simplicity, to give a clear message without any distractions, a quiet strength. I also displayed that image of power in the advertising posters. So, it was very important to me to play with that duality in all my design. I used a contrast between purity and strength. I’m not really studying marketing, but 65% of energy drink users are below 35 years old, so I thought I should target these 65 percents, of course, but also the remaining 35 percents, more adult and more conscious about the health issues. That’s why a duality between strength and health was so important.

As for the name, I went in a Latin dictionary, and I found the word “valens” which means strength and healthiness, no need to say it suited perfectly my product. I added the tag-line “powerful water” to target a little more my product. Since it’s “new”, I thought it was needed.

Now, let’s look at the logo. I tried to totally skip the aggressive image most energy drinks logo use. The idea was to use a representative element of the water, and to give it a more subtle and more dynamic look. A droplet was the most obvious water representation I could think of. Then, I applied a trend called VariDot, which consists into using multiple dots of different sizes or color, to form a whole. This trend gives an artistic (and thus intriguing) dimension to the logo. The general size of the dots increases with the sense of reading, which implies a certain amount of dynamism. The size still varies a lot, it’s pretty random, which represents some kind of nervousness (even if I tried to give a healthy image, the product still was an energy drink). I applied 3 different blue colors to the pictogram. The font is ITC Avant Garde, which is a simple and readable fond, used by Adidas, notably.

The can, the packaging and the paper bag use the same design rules. A strong simplicity, almost minimalistic, to represent a clean image, without any distraction. I think that this minimalism also gives a more luxurious image to the brand.

The stationeries, the advertising products and the identity guidelines document use these rules again. A strong simplicity, some small characters to focus on the space and the cleanliness, contrasted with a strong blue, putting in evidence the logo or the final product.

Being a huge fan of Peter Jaworowski’s work ( http://behance.net/thehejz ) I tried to apply what I love so much in his advertising posters, the way he uses visual elements to give such a strong image to the product or the brand he works with. When I applied this idea to my product, I tried to think about what concepts, what image I wanted to display. The final product, the can, is the centre piece of the creation. It fades into water, and you can see a surfer, sharks and fishes, coming out of it. The idea was to represent healthiness (the surfer, the sport, the water), strength (the surfer again, the sharks, the dynamic water) and a touch of luxury (exotic fishes). I added a few details such as a lighter blue gradient, to add some depth, some drop shadows so the can doesn’t just “fly” in the poster, or even the packshot. The packshot is made of the logo. I thought it wasn’t useful to add the can, since it’s the main piece of the poster anyway. What’s nice with this ad is that you can change the elements to have a different atmosphere, a slightly different image. I illustrated that fact with a yacht in the “sea”.

I think I’m done with the general summary of my project. I’m still a student, so maybe this doesn’t reach a professional level and my explanations might not be fully relevant for everyone. But I surely learned an amazing lot, doing this project. You can also see the full project here: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/valens-Energy-Drink-Identity/238512