"Mmmm... MONKEY POPS!!"

This is a cereal box I designed and built for portfolio class at school. I thought the traditional "clamshell box" suggested by the instructor to house our final portfolio was a bit too rigid and formulaic for a free-wheelin' artist such as myself, so I devised this cereal box that would house my portfolio instead. It turned out to be quite the headache.

This was before I got my kick-ass large format photo printer, so I didn't have the capability to print this thing out full-size. I didn't want to chance taking it to print services at the college, so I started calling around to local print services shops (Kinkos, etc). Apparently none of them could print it out at the size I needed on the type of cardstock I needed in a decent amount of time without sending it off to some out-of-state printing facility. I decided to just print it out in two segments, then mount those segments onto cardstock with spray adhesive, cut the thing out and fold and assemble it. Easier said then done. Spray mounting two large sheets of paper and getting them to line up square is a task I don't wish to repeat. I got them down fairly well, and then let them dry.

After sufficient drying time had elapsed, I proceeded to cut the entire box shape out with a ruler and x-acto blade. With that done, I attempted to score the cardstock along the fold lines and fold it into shape for the gluing. This was made more difficult by the fact that I overestimated the stock thickness of an actual cereal box -- I had gotten too thick of a cardstock, which made folding it along nice straight lines near impossible.

Once I had it all scored and folded, I discovered it didn't quite line up right, which wasn't noticeable, except for the fact that tab on the top flap didn't extend out far enough to fit under the slot on the opposite flap. So, I rigged up a little adhesive velcro to secure the top. The end result looks nice, and I'm considering doing more cereal boxes in the future (perhaps Octo-Pops), now that I've learned from my mistakes... and I can now print the whole thing out in one piece!!

The design of the logo is based off the Kellog's Corn Pops logo, but all of the elements are created anew by myself. Even the cereal bits in the background were created by simply pouring out a box of Corn Pops onto my scanner and scanning the resulting mess (I don't recommend actually doing this, especially with your more sticky cereals). All the text is created in either photoshop or illustrator, and I simply snagged scans of my other work for the back advert, and my bananamonkey logo image for the front.