Package design with Ne-Yo- UPDATE

posted 4.26.12 at 12:00 am
UPDATE!  Head to the bottom of this entry...

A while ago now I got a call from my agent here in NYC to pack up my drawing stuff and head into the city for a colaborative meeting with another illustrator and hip hop star Ne-Yo.

It turns out what this meeting (at a fancy-shmancy hotel in Midtown) was was to brainstorm and come up with a label design for a new liqour being offered by Barcardi that Ne-Yo (henceforth referred to as Neyo, to save time) was going to put his celebrity behind.  The drink was to be called Bacardi Red, and was a mixture of Bacardi Rum and.... (wait for it) Tequila.  Mmmmmmm...

I couldn't have been a worse choice for this.  I'm no designer, and product packaging is about the furthest segment of the commerical art world I've ever even been considered for.  But, whatkinyado.

I sat at a large conference table with Neyo, his people and handful of ass-kissing yes men, probably from the marketing agency, who got really excited whenever anything was spoken by someone of importance in the room.  (Not me...)  It was a very nauseating scene.  Ideas would be thrown out by Neyo or someone in his group, and the marketing people would fawn over the words as if their lives depepended on the validity of them (which they may very well have!)

Turns out the only one talking who had anything to contribute was Neyo himself.  He had a clean and clear vision for what the lable should 'say' in a visual sense, and threw ideas at me and this other illustrator to sketch out and patiently waited for us draw out our versions of whatever it was we were helping to come up with.  It was kind of a neat situation, except for the 15 or so useless bodies in the room all trying to put their stamp on whatever it was that was being created.  

Needless to say, not much got solved.  

Neyo was very gracious to me and the other illustrator, and took the time to thank us for our time and efforts, and proved himself to be a real gentleman.

The reason I'm writing about this is for no other reason than I saw a new Bacardi ad recently and this event from last year popped into my head.  So, I did a search for this new beverage.  To no avail.  It seems either the product came and went (my guess) or something just fizzled out in the developement phase.  Who knows. 
I have a feeling the culprit was that I'm sure nobody could stomach a rum and tequila cocktail.  But what do I know?

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UPDATE!
That's how good my brain works- I couldn't find the product anywhere because I was searching for the wrong product!  Duh!
Two nights agao I caught a commercial with the afformentioned Ne-yo, hawking the new MALIBU Red!  My memory, from this meeting over a year ago, told me it was Bacardi.  Huh!  So, yes, Malibu Red is the new liqour that is a mix of tequila and MALIBU rum.  Looks like it did see the light of day, after all!
That very night I opened up a new magazine I'd gotten in the mail and sure enough, there was another ad for it.  
From what I remember of the design jam session, it looks as though they used an amalgamation of various designs the other illustrator and I threw out that day.  Neat.
Still, I get a headache AND heartburn just thinking about drinking this stuff.  Oh well. 

just for fun, out about      

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