Those of you that follow me on social media know that Travis and I have launched a new business venture. If you’re hearing about it for the first time, head on over to our website to check it out, or just keep reading.
This is the second installment of a series of blog posts that we are going to publish over the next month to introduce to you to EAT, and show you some behind the scenes of how we got to opening day. You can read the first post here. This next one is product development. How we got from idea to product in hand.
Like I said in the first post, EAT started with an original idea and that idea has been put on the back burner, but the idea we ran with is equally good: greeting cards that integrate nutrition information with good design.
Like most of my ideas, they go down in a notebook, and if needed are drawn out with “fancy” illustrations. So as you can see (picture below) this is originally where I saw the idea going as far as the general design of the card. Up until a couple weeks before we sent the illustrations off to the printer, this is what the cards were going to look like (the thank you notes at least).
The hardest part of the product development was creating the actual designs for each card. I went through multiple different mediums (including using my wacom tablet) and nothing was perfect, nothing was giving me the feeling of “YES, THIS is it.” Until watercolors. I do not consider my self a professional artist by any means, but I’m no stranger to different mediums either. I messed around with watercolors and we both loved the look of them.
After I perfected the designs, the next hurdle was how do we get them onto the computer to eventually send them to the printers. I originally thought I would just take pictures, download them onto the computer and mess with them. My photographing skills are not up to par and I was so not happy with how they were coming out. We decided to scan the original designs onto the computer. Yea my college all in one printer-scanner wasn’t doing the job either. Trav suggested we take them to Kinkos (apparently it’s now fed-ex office) and have them scan the original designs. Again, extra fees we didn’t account for, but we loved how they turned out. Having a big huge professional scanner does the trick quite nicely.
Once we had the designs on a flash drive, I was able to rearrange things through Photoshop, scale down images and strategically place them on the template for the cards. So, while there was photoshopping done, what is on the cards is just scaled down from what was originally done.
As far as the backs of each card, I started with a nutrition facts template in Adobe illustrator that I tweaked and designed until it matched the real thing. For all of the nutrition facts on the actual labels, I got the information from the USDA nutrient database. I researched serving sizes for each fruit and vegetable on the cards to make it as realiztic as possible. For the nutrition blurbs, I did my research through journal articles and trusted sources.
After we finalized the card layouts, and checked them twice-off to the printers they went. We made sure that where we printed them was local. Having all of our products produced in the United States is a big deal for us. So while we would like to eventually produce everything in house, we are making sure that the companies we do outsource to hold up to our standards of being in the United States, and being environmentally friendly.
If you were wondering one of our goals is to eventually print all of our products in house. We are doing the best we can with the budget that we have. So if anyone so generously would like to invest in a printer for us, well then free cards forever for you! 😉
So there you have it, a quick run down of how we went from an idea to an actual product. Next week I’m going to talk marketing and packaging: MY FAVORITE!!
With much love,
Elise And Travis
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Email: hello@eathealthydesigns.com
Shop: eathealthydesigns.com
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