Our fascination for hand painted botanical illustrations

The product identity and packaging for Kaytra utilized an illustrative style of botanical illustrations to communicate a hand-crafted sensibility. Drawing on the past for inspiration has always been a very valid technique to capture a sense of nostalgia and a more wholesome aesthetic.

Kaytra – an exceptional and challenging packaging design project for us, had a requirement to convey the product offering through graphic illustrations. These products were made of special ingredients i.e extracts of natural and rare herbs, fruits, flowers etc. with special properties. These herbs are very difficult to obtain, which made our process even more challenging – it was initiated with intense research, backed by details like size, form, visual properties of the herb focussing on the textures and colours. All this information helped in creating detailed illustrations explored by starting with endless pencil sketches, and developing a variety of compositions most suitable to allow scalability.

The compositions were made in a variety of more than two or more herbs. It was crucial to keep the proportions of these herbs right. The ingredients needed to be designed and illustrated in such a way that we were able to plan for future product extensions. It was important for us to create an illustration style and template suitable for any packaging format and size, which would be easy to adapt without loosing its prominence. The scale range could be anywhere between 0.5 cm to as large as 5 feet, applicable to any kind of print medium or digital marketing medium.

Antique style botanical illustrations were wonderfully handled and laid out to deliver a very classic looking packaging solution that expressed a genuine sense of detail and craft. The illustrations were intelligently crafted by hand, digitally enhanced and delicately styled to bring in old-world edge to sleek and modern packaging.