3D Box Art
Today we will be creating a piece of box art that can be used to sell a product or promote your services.
To start things off, we need to create the front and the side of the box. Here is a template you can use to base the size of the box on. Right click and save file as, and open in the image file in Adobe Photoshop. From there you can select and paste into a new 500 by 500 pixel document.
Now that you have the template, design your box art. This is a fairly basic task, but I will explain some things that might not be obvious to you.
To start off I am going to create a basic box design that will span the side and front of the box. This design will simply add an aesthetic appeal to the box.
When creating packaging, or something to go around your product, you need to catch the potential buyer’s attention. The easiest way to do this is to use high contrast colors as the main focal point of your box. This area should also have the title of your product.
Notice how the brightest part on the box is in bight yellow? This immediately draws attention to the title of the product, something which will help your box describe your service. The contrasting black title and logo tell you immediately the name of the product. This draws the user in and makes them want to find out “What exactly is campfire?”
That is what we answer with the next additions. We want users to get a message about what “campfire” is, so we deliver with a tagline. Keep the text smaller than the logo, but legible. Note that we will be shrinking this down so things may become unreadable at smaller sizes. We are also adding the price in bold, because we are trying to sell a product with this box art, it’s a good idea to include that.
And onto the small details…
The details we added are fairly straight forward. Basically we need to create the image of a real box, so we added a barcode and another Number at the bottom side, possibly an ISBN, who knows; it won’t get read anyway because of the next step. We also added version numbers. It is a good idea to keep these up to date if you will be updating it.
We also added a feature set on the right, so if this box was real someone could turn to the side and read some basic features, of course if it were real there would also be a lot more, and these might be the requirements, but it works for what we are doing.
Now that you have your front and side designs finished, its time to make it appear like a box. Select all (control + A) and go to Edit > copy Merged, and Edit > Paste to get a copy of your designs. Place this pasted layer above all your other layers. Now take the magic wand tool and delete the white around your layers. Make a new layer under this and fill it with white.
New select your side and Edit > Cut, and Edit > Paste so your side and front are on different layers. (Take note there is an easier way to do these last steps, by selecting all your front layers and copy merged. Basically we are just making copies of our front and sides to modify)
Line up your front and side layers.
Now select your Front layer and go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. Select the top right corner of your front layer and pull it down like so:
Now go to Edit > Free Transform (control + T) and pull the right side of your box to the left so it doesn’t look so distorted and the perspective is more natural.
Now perform the exact same steps on the side except use the upper left corner and left side to transform it. You should now have a 3d box.
With some copy + pasting and reflection techniques you can have a cool product box that you can use on your website or whatever you please!
As you can see this technique is easily reusable and can create many different box effects! Happy product creation!
To start things off, we need to create the front and the side of the box. Here is a template you can use to base the size of the box on. Right click and save file as, and open in the image file in Adobe Photoshop. From there you can select and paste into a new 500 by 500 pixel document.
Now that you have the template, design your box art. This is a fairly basic task, but I will explain some things that might not be obvious to you.
To start off I am going to create a basic box design that will span the side and front of the box. This design will simply add an aesthetic appeal to the box.
When creating packaging, or something to go around your product, you need to catch the potential buyer’s attention. The easiest way to do this is to use high contrast colors as the main focal point of your box. This area should also have the title of your product.
Notice how the brightest part on the box is in bight yellow? This immediately draws attention to the title of the product, something which will help your box describe your service. The contrasting black title and logo tell you immediately the name of the product. This draws the user in and makes them want to find out “What exactly is campfire?”
That is what we answer with the next additions. We want users to get a message about what “campfire” is, so we deliver with a tagline. Keep the text smaller than the logo, but legible. Note that we will be shrinking this down so things may become unreadable at smaller sizes. We are also adding the price in bold, because we are trying to sell a product with this box art, it’s a good idea to include that.
And onto the small details…
The details we added are fairly straight forward. Basically we need to create the image of a real box, so we added a barcode and another Number at the bottom side, possibly an ISBN, who knows; it won’t get read anyway because of the next step. We also added version numbers. It is a good idea to keep these up to date if you will be updating it.
We also added a feature set on the right, so if this box was real someone could turn to the side and read some basic features, of course if it were real there would also be a lot more, and these might be the requirements, but it works for what we are doing.
Now that you have your front and side designs finished, its time to make it appear like a box. Select all (control + A) and go to Edit > copy Merged, and Edit > Paste to get a copy of your designs. Place this pasted layer above all your other layers. Now take the magic wand tool and delete the white around your layers. Make a new layer under this and fill it with white.
New select your side and Edit > Cut, and Edit > Paste so your side and front are on different layers. (Take note there is an easier way to do these last steps, by selecting all your front layers and copy merged. Basically we are just making copies of our front and sides to modify)
Line up your front and side layers.
Now select your Front layer and go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. Select the top right corner of your front layer and pull it down like so:
Now go to Edit > Free Transform (control + T) and pull the right side of your box to the left so it doesn’t look so distorted and the perspective is more natural.
Now perform the exact same steps on the side except use the upper left corner and left side to transform it. You should now have a 3d box.
With some copy + pasting and reflection techniques you can have a cool product box that you can use on your website or whatever you please!
As you can see this technique is easily reusable and can create many different box effects! Happy product creation!
