Prompt: The prompt for this project was to create a matchbox design for a restaurant in New York City. The restaurant was assigned randomly and we were required to visit and collect images to use for colours and visuals in our design.
The restaurant I was assigned was Ellen’s Stardust Diner. The diner is on Broadway and all the waiters/waitresses sing while you eat. The first part of the assignment was to go to the restaurant and take 12 images, 5 of which would be chosen by the class for use in the design. I then created four initial designs. We were allowed to use our 5 photos directly (for example, the waitress statue I used in the yellow design) or much less obviously (all the colours I used are sampled from the photos). Each design needed to include the name of the restaurant, the address, the phone number, email, and website. The class helped me narrow it down to two designs and then I refined these, constructing test versions of the finished matchboxes for each (as well as a couple slightly different versions of the two designs to see which looked better when constructed). In class we were supposed to choose one of these two boxes to make for the final product but the class decided I should make both. For the final matchboxes I stuck on a striker and added matches to the boxes, which I color coded to each box (I bought rainbow matches online and they matched perfectly). I made two of each matchbox. I had a lot of fun making these matchboxes and it was really helpful to do four designs and then narrow that down. Only using photos from the location for the design was a great constraint and got me to think about using specific elements from the restaurant in my designs. I’m really proud of how these came out and this assignment helped me improve a lot in terms of thinking about my designs.