Eighty One Graphic Design recently blogged about being inspired by a foray into the retail world (shopping), and I commented that indeed I too am extremely inspired by what I see when out and about and often take photos with my new super fab mobile phone camera.

So talking of retail inspiration, I was wowed when in Boots on Saturday and saw this beautiful bit of product packaging by No.17 cosmetics brand. Called ‘The Vintage Collection’, apparently for the 40th anniversary of the 17 brand.

Now what is really interesting though is how this design relates to a beauty brand design I created in July last year…..

Whilst in the store and snapping away with my camera like some sort of industrial spy (I’m sure I heard some teenage girls laughing at me as well!), I was fairly aware that the colour scheme was very similar to a brand design concept I’d presented to a new fashion brand a year previously, but I only became aware of how similar once I got home and opened the photos and compared them to my own work.

You can see above how the colours are pretty much exactly the same pallette as the pallete I used for Love in the Afternoon.

I’d love to say that the designer for 17 has spied the piece in my portfolio (I loved the colours and so had this in my portfolio for quite a length of time last year) and was purely inspired by my colour scheme combined with the whole ‘vintage flowers’ concept, however in the same way that Prince was inspired by Jimmy Hendrix, I too was inspired in my own choice of colour scheme by this stunning piece of artwork below;

Granted not quite as close to the 17 design as my own artwork, but still very close so who is to say where the inspiration came to them from?

This gorgeous illustration is by a talented illustrator called Jon Sawyer and inspired the colour scheme in my brand design for Love in the Afternoon.

Although Love in the Afternoon ended up with an entirely different colour scheme (below) in the end, but interesting to note how designers are inspired by one another. So who inspired the 17 designers’ in their work; my design last year? Or the original illustrator?

I have to say though that Jon Sawyer has been around inspiring people for 30 years, and I only 6

On another fairly unrelated note
What is a scary is despite trying for the last 10 minutes to find the corporate website for 17 on Google I can’t find it!

Errm….how is it a brand I’ve been seeing since I first applied blue mascara to my eyes in the 1980s can’t be easily found online in the 2000’s…..Vintage indeed.

Don’t they have a website? Can you find it for me?

All I can find is this, does this mean they are a Boots brand?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm and is filed under Design Inspiration, Design Projects, Thoughts on Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.