ABOUT

Concept:

Mark Davies Seeds is a retailer specialising in tropical plants, providing seeds, seedlings, plants, nutrition and growing equipment, as well as offering aftercare advice.

The concept was to produce an eye-catching header banner illustration depicting the business owner, Mark, standing in a garden filled with tropical plants, with vibrant colours, as well as displaying a selection of the other products they offer, set against an idyllic backdrop of English countryside.

The illustration was also to incorporate a logo element, which could be used independently of the main image. The completed artwork was then to be used as a header for the business's Ebay page, in the first instance, as well as the following ecommerce website, which I was to design, build and populate with all the necessary content.

Execution:

Using a wide assortment of images supplied by the client, as well as scenic imagery I sourced myself, I proceeded to create a photo montage of the 'garden' and background, upon which I then based the line art illustration, created in Adobe Illustrator.

Moving all the separate layers over to Photoshop, I then coloured each element separately, allowing for potential rearrangement and subsequent repurposing of the plant and product images.

Upon completion of the full illustration, this was applied to the client's Ebay header and I got to work on the ecommerce website. The template design for this was built from scratch inside Photoshop and sent to a 3rd party coding supplier, PSD2HTML, who provided the code to be applied to a WordPress theme template.

Once the WP theme had been installed and was functioning correctly, I then proceeded to add all my client's content, including products, providing details on each, along with imagery and care instructions. Several of the plants and products included in the illustration were used to indicate different product lines and categories.

Result:

The client saw a significant upturn in sales on their Ebay Seller's page, once the illustration and logo had been applied. Following the launch of the ecommerce website, steady orders were received, gradually increasing over the course of the following months, until they reached a continuous stream, keeping my client busy, to the extent that he had to hire an assistant to cope with the resultant influx of sales and deliveries.