nezjam HAND MADE JAM 1
what is nezjam
Nezjam is a line of small-batch specialty jams made from simple, natural ingredients. This set contains three jams: peach habanero, strawberry basil, and apple bacon. The ingredients in the jams were chosen as an exploration into how humans percieve taste. Up to 80% of the flavours we taste in food come from the scents and smells they emit, which is why it is difficult to taste food with a cold. Foods that share similar aromatic properties will thereform complimnt each other and pair well together. The site Foodpairings. com suggests ingredients that pair well based on their chemical aromatic properties. Using the site for inspiration, I picked out three food pairings that would work well together to create non-traditional, yet perfectly paired jams. The name Nezjam comes from the French word, ‘nez’, which translates to ‘nose’ in English.
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the packaging I wanted all aspects of the packaging to draw from the jam within. I chose to work with unfinished wood because it is a naturally-occuring material, and reflects the natural, wholesome ingredients used to make the jam.
The front of the package is very minimal, with three small rectangles cut into the wood to reveal the product inside.
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The back of the jam features etching of the main ingredient in each of the jams.
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the labels The labels incorporate the same imprints that are seen etched into the side of the box. Each imprint is a stamp of the fruits features in each jam: peaches, apples, and strawberries.
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the reason I chose to make jam and design the packaging becuase I have recently become interested in making my own food preserves. I try to cook my own food and use healthy ingredients as much as possible. About half a year ago I developed psoriasis, which is an autoimmune disease of the skin. Ultimately, it is best managed through strict, healthy eating. I now read all food labels and only eat foods with added sugars or preservatives on rare occasions. Many foods, including jam, sometimes use excess chemicals to preserve the food. In addition, added suagr is hiding everywhere in packaged food, including places where you’d least expect it, such as bread and deli meats. North American diets consist of high amounts of sugar which leads to a huge amount of metabolic diseases and other illnesses. If people stopped eating foods with added sugar, I can garuntee that America would be willing to offer free health care plans to their citizens because people would not be visitng their doctors nearly as much. Yes, jam has added sugar, but this is a food that I would only enjoy on occasion. In addition, it makes a great gift. People think you put endless amounts of effort into crafting the jam, when really you threw a bunch of ingredients into a pot and boiled them for an hour.
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I started by brainstorming the flavours of jams I wanted to make. I went through many ideas, such as using only local Ontario produce, to possibly making 4 jams to represent the different seasons, or jams that could represent different geographic locations. Ultimately, I decided I would make jams that included ingredients that were aromatically paired. Because most of what we taste is actually the smells from the food, many strange culinary combinations work very well together because the ingredients share similar aromatic properties. Some common examples include apples and pork, or chocolate and oranges. This concept intriguied me because of my science background. I went onto foodpairing.com to search for ingredients that chemically paired well togethers, and came up with my final 3 flavours: peach habanero, apples bacon, and strawberry basil.
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making of: jam
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Apple bacon 3 medium apples, peeled 10 bacon strips 1 onion 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup maple syrup 1/4 cup coffee 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
Peach habanero 5 peaches 3 cups sugar 3 habanero peppers 1 pack of pectin 1 tblsp lemon juice
Strawberry basil 2 lbs strawberries 5 cups sugar 1 pack of pectin Juice from 1/2 lemon 2 tsp dried basil
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the fruit stamps While I was brainstorming, I decided to slice up a bunch of fruit an stamp them into my sketchbook. I really liked the textures that the stamps left—they really represented the textures of the actual fruit, and gave a sense of how it would feel to bite into the actual piece of fruit. At the time, I had no idea what I would use the stamps for, but I knew I wanted to somehow incorportate them into my packaging. The fruits that were sacrificed for the making of the stamps would not be forgotten. I ended up scanning the stamps into illustrator and vectorizing them. I wanted people to get a sense of the product before they even opened it, so I decided to engrave the fruit impressions into the sides of the wooden packaging. I also used the impressions to create the final sticker labels. Because no colour was used on the outside packaging, I decided to use bright, fresh colours on the labels. I lasercut holes into the lid of the wooden box, so that the labels would show through, bringing a little bit of colour to the outside of the overall design. On screen, the stickers looked nice and crisp, but when printed out, the black and green colours appeared smeared from the way the vinyl machine had printed them. Next time, I try to print labels onto a nice paper stock, and then glue them to the jars using a sprayglue.
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the box When desiging the wooden box, I had to decide between making an individual box for each jam, or making one larger box to house all 3. I went with the latter, because a larger box displayed the three jams as a gift set. If the jams were to be sold sepereately, the simple labels could easily printed off an adhered to the jars within minutes. However, a box takes about an hour to constuct, so it only made sense to have such elaborate packaging for a specialty gift set. The box cannot be reproduced as fast as the labels, but the wood can be laser cut and glued in under an hour. The pieces are easy to assemble thanks to the jigsaw-like attachments. I also added the jigsaw pattern to the labels to create a unified look. I was nervous when I first went to laser-cut the box because I could only cut it the day before the project was due. I was originally planning the cut the box on the previous Thursday, but mother nature did not let me due to a snow day. Over the weekend i checked and re-checked the measurments on the cut file to ensure that each piece was the size I had planned for. Thankfully, once I finally cut the box on Monday afternoon, every piece easily fit together.
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