PTP - Gift Packaging/Vouchers

Gift Vouchers.
In the cafe people often ask about gift vouchers, and want to buy relatives or friends a voucher for the cafe. Previously Sonya has written one out on pink paper and put them in small pink envelopes. This was fine for her to do as she didn't feel that there were enough people who wanted gift vouchers to condone getting some designed for her. Every year The Pink Teapot contributes for a breast cancer charity event, most businesses in Otley donate something like vouchers or products from their business. Therefore Sonya decided that I should design some gift voucher for her for the donation.

Development.

I decided that I wanted to create gift vouchers that fold out and reveal the amount on the voucher. Something that looks elegant and will work well for a gift cards, especially something special as it is one off for a charity. I designed many different layouts of the voucher so that I could experiment to see what each of them would look like.

From those designs I chose three to show to Sonya as examples to see if she liked them and wanted to use them. They all had different layouts, although they all work in the same way.

To make the voucher stay closed I made love hearts out of card for each of the corners which folded together to look like this.

I think that these vouchers will work really well in the cafe and represent an appropriate message for whoever wins the voucher.

Opening the voucher is really easy, although closing it is more complex, but not too difficult.

When the vouchers are unfolded the recipient of the voucher will see where the voucher is for and will see how much the voucher is worth in the cafe.

This is the voucher opened and closed. This voucher is needed for the event in May. After creating these vouchers for the charity event, Sonya really wanted more making for the cafe. These vouchers were about 10cm by 10cm, this was because they were a one off, although I suggested that if she wanted them to use in the cafe on a regular basis she would need them to be smaller, this would also be more affordable and doable. From this she asked for 50 gift vouchers, as they are all hand made they took quite a while to produce, although because they were a lot smaller, it took less time and materials. The vouchers have a space in them so that any price can be written, so that the vouchers are more flexible.

Packaging.
For the packing to take away cakes and short breads, Sonya suggested a box. I thought that it would work well and be aesthetically pleasing to produce cake boxes with a similar seal to the vouchers. Although I think that this would be a waste of time as they are a lot more complex to make, and with the amount of people who ask to take out cake, it wouldn't be viable. Sonya then suggested that she could just have them in food bags with a sticker in a bag. This is something that would wrok a lot better and be more practical in the cafe.

I started to look into the paper bag design as I will be printing on the front of the bags.

Mock ups.

I have sent off for some stickers, simple stickers with the character of Sonya's face on them, this will add a touch of the cafe to the take away bags and make them more aesthetically pleasing.

I mocked up the design of the bag onto a paper bag, although I will be sending off the design to print, although I think that these bags should only be used if customers ask for a bag, or if they purchase a lot to take away, this will save giving out too many bags. Although the bags will promote the business and advertise it to anyone who see the bag, this will be good for the cafe, and may gain more business from this.