A Reflection on Packaging by Emily no.4
the purpose of packaging is to contain and protect the product. The purpose of packaging is to catch the attention of the consumer. The purpose of the packaging is to highlight the benefits of the product to the consumer. The purpose of packaging is to make the product stand out against its competitors. The purpose of packaging is to generate maximum sales and revenue while remaining cost-effective to produce to the manufacturer. The purpose of packaging is to protect, entice, and be beautiful.
the houseware project. Pick a consumer household or hardware product, and (re)design either a sleeve or a hanger package for in-store onshelf display. Packaging should hold and display the product creatively and have a low environmental impact.
target adventure For my field research, I chose to visit Target. Target, to me, is the version of Walmart you go to when you want to feel good about yourself, and I thought that I would surely be able to find interesting and inspiring packages to fuel my first Packaging project. For the most part, I wasn’t wrong. My favorite example purely aesthetically speaking was Harry’s Razors. The display was adorable, the packaging was straightforward, no-nonsense, and fairly gender neutral. The brand seems to be appealing to the same audience as Dollar Shave Club. As a bonus, the boxes were made out of recycled materials so it was also environmentally friendly! Double win!
The loser for packaging finds was everything produced by a company called Rapid Brands. Ew. The boxes all looked as though they were design in Microsoft WordArt, and beyond being visually ugly, the boxes themselves felt flimsy and cheap like glossy card stock, which didn’t communicate anything great about the products inside. The boxes did have a hanging apparatus, but were not functional. Many of the hang tabs were torn off, and all the packages were stored in a box on the shelf.
What I learned from this experience was that appearances really do mean everything when it comes to consumer goods, and design can make or break a product. My boyfriend (pictured beardman) was immediately drawn to the Harry’s display before I even saw it and went over to investigate and he doesn’t even shave. The display was so enticing that it made him want to learn more about a product that he already knows he doesn’t need or want. Packaging is powerful. On the flip side, I was cracking up at the Rapid Ramen Cooker at the store and was appalled by the borderline racist Wonton font and over all ugliness, but hours later after I was home, I realized that a device for cooking ramen would actually be a useful product to me. If the packaging was better, I probably would have left with it. The packaging was so bad that it made me immediately dismiss the product, and it lost the company a sale.
I couldn’t find any especially egregious examples of bad packaging environmentally speaking--though I’m sure those Rapid Brands products are not especially Earth-friendly. I did find several good examples, however, and they did give me a few ideas. The first and most obvious trend I saw was the one Harry’s utilized--make a package using either recycled or bio degradable materials. One major trend with hanging packages is to simply make the packaging as minimal as possible--less material = less environmental impact and lower production cost. This skillet was a really good example: a pretty large product with only a thin ribbon of cardstock as its packaging.
Another trend I noticed was utilizing the product itself as part of the packaging. This “sink corner caddy” uses its package to demonstrate the function of the product itself while also doubling as a hanging device. My takeaway from my observations is that there are at least three major strategies I can approach this product from: 1) make the material low-impact, 2) use very little material, or 3) make the package itself part of the product or make it reusable for another purpose.
persona generation We were tasked to create customer personas in class based on randomly selected demographic characteristics. My group was given ‘Female’, ‘28-35’, ‘Hispanic’, and ‘Married.’ From that we created our persona, Josephine, a 34 year old nurse with two children, a dog, and a deadbeat mechanic husband. We, admittedly, got carried away in our character creation to the degree that we had already planned out the family’s history, Josephine’s workplace fling, and even her kids’ daily lives and personalities. I know Josephine and her son Max better than I know my own family.
That made our in class flash project easy. We had to create a screwdriver package that would appeal to our persona. We came up with the “Big n Tough” brand screwdriver set, and even a backstory to lead up to the purchase. Josephine came home from a long shift to find the same leaky faucet running in the kitchen that she had tasked her husband, Juan, to fix that morning. She found Juan asleep on the couch, his hand in a bag of Cheetos. She shook him awake and asked why he couldn’t do the one thing she asked while she was at work. He told her he needed a flathead screwdriver and that he couldn’t find one. She asked why he hadn’t gone to the store to get a new one.
He said, “I dunno, I was doing stuff.” Josephine heads back out in the rain in search of a screwdriver, since she has to do everything herself. She goes to Walmart. The “Big n Tough” catches her eye immediately because of it’s bright green box (she’s very fond of vibrant colors), she’s further intrigued by the box’s claims to “last a lifetime” and “have the tool for every job.” If she had to spend money, she would want to spend it on a sturdy, versatile product that would reduce the chance of her having to drive to Walmart at 10pm in the rain in the future. As the final nail in the coffin, she sees on the box art a photo of a father and son working on a home project together, and the sight of a functional family moves her. Sold.
noodle waifu The packaging that I chose to redesign was the Rapid Brand’s Rapid Ramen Maker that I discussed in my first entry, 1) because it is a product that I am interested in, and 2) because it’s current packaging fails on both the visual and eco-friendly levels of this assignment. My biggest qualm with the current brand identity is how “As Seen on TV” or “Buy me as a joke and then shove me in your cupboard” it presents itself when, after trials, this is an actual convenient and useful product. It deserves a brand and a package to match. Hence my total brand overhaul, “Noodle Waifu.” The next page shows my semantics deferential scale. The pink squares represent where the Noodle Waifu will be, and the gray squares represent where the Rapid Ramen Cooker is.
pricey
quality
smart
useful
cheap
dingy
wasteful
gimmicky
creative brief company / product: Rapid Brands “Rapid Ramen Cooker”
project description: Design new packaging for the ramen cooker that is visually appealing, effectively describes product, and is environmentally conscious. purpose of project: For the purpose of this scenario, to boost the sales and improve the image of Rapid Brands; in reality, to practice implementing basic packaging concepts learned in class. target audiences/personas: College students, bachelors, gamers, anyone who needs a cheap meal and doesn’t want to wait. Ideally men 18-30, but I think it can also be marketed to women in the same age range. current audience perception: The product packaging currently looks cheap, gimmicky, ineffective and possibly hazardous.
desired audience perception: The product needs to look clean and safe, but also fun. The audience should feel excited and even cute while partaking in what is traditionally a “hard times” meal. unique selling proposition: The product is chiefly a convenience tool, so the packaging needs to emphasize the ease of use and the fast prep time. Additionally, the product itself is made of BPA free recycled plastic and claims to only use half the water of traditional ramen cooking methods. That coupled with low-impact packaging could make for a convincing eco-friendly selling angle as well.
sketching In order to reduce the environmental impact of my packaging, I decided to change it from a box to a sleeve with a hanger on top. I sketched out a few iterations of how to wrap the noodle maker before deciding on a basic, vertical belly band. This is also the stage where I decided to hang the noodle maker lengthways, as that made distributing the weight of the product easier and also gave me more real estate on the front of the package.
noodle waifu
For the actual graphics of the package, I wanted to make something fun and lighthearted that would appeal to my audience while sort of romanticizing the idea of instant ramen. I went through a few characters, like a panda and a rabbit (it would have been called “Rabbit Ramen Maker…because rabbits are fast?), but I settled on making the mascot a cute cartoon girl with double-buns that resembled noodles. The mechanic of the mascot eating noodles and the noodles becoming the lower half of the package was something I had thought of since the beginning, and it worked best with a human-face. The girl, the “Noodle Waifu” also appealed best to the sample of potential customers I asked.
designing I elected to make my comp out of recycled lightweight cardboard to add to the ecofriendliness factor, and also because I think it adds a layer of sophistication to what is otherwise a pretty silly package. I changed my logotype to Collector Comic (a cousin to Comic Sans)
For the back of the packaging, I boiled the Rapid Ramen Cooker’s messy instructions down to three simple steps and then created a vector illustration for each.
I then utilized the empty space on the inside of the package to include two recipes one could create using the Noodle Waifu: Rad Thai and Faux Pho.
field testing I put my design to the test by asking a sampling of my customer demographic via Facebook their thoughts on the Noodle Waifu. These are the questions I asked and a few of the responses I received.
what draws you in on the package design? “I like that it is a playful design. And it catches your eye. More detail oriented rather than color.”
how likely would you be to buy this product? “If I would buy it is up in the air. But it’s definitely cute, so I’d consider it.”
“It’s adorable. This would be why I picked it up. I love her cute little face, and I love the noodles in her mouth. I think it’s great.”
“I think I’d pick it up and look at it for a while, deliberating. If the price was right, I’d probably get it. The packaging is very eye catching and it’s hilarious.” “If I didn’t already have three I would absolutely buy one.” what appeals to you about this product? “I like the product because I am a 20 year old who thrives on ramen” “I do love ramen. I think it looks very practical, as far as ramen cookers go, and it looks like it would be easy to store, which for a college kid or someone who lives off ramen and lives in a small space, that’s important.” “Convenience and ramen.”
“It’s honestly a very simple and straight forward design. Gets the point across with no ridiculousness. It’s a fun design that I could see people reusing/coloring” what isn’t important? “the design is very nice and indicates the product would be more expensive than other ramen cookers, maybe it was over designed for the product?” “Can’t really critique a minimal design; way better than the one put on the Rapid Ramen Cooker.”
the dewormer project. Professionals are tired of seeing craft beer labels at portfolio day. So, the challenge is to design a label for an unsexy product that no one wants to design for: horse dewormer.
field trip Our class had the privilege of visiting Stewart & Associates. The gravity of what a “big deal” the firm was didn’t really set in for me until the video presentation. Wow. It got even better when he started talking about job benefits. The overall attitude of the firm really appealed to me: a small group of talented and dedicated people come together to make great design, and still have time to have families and lives outside of art. The sweet fully furnished condo on the top floor was just the icing on the cake. Really though, the history and structure of the building was fascinating and I loved learning about the artifacts found there as well as the ghosts. Overall I really enjoyed the trip, and I’m looking forward to having a real-world crit (and pizza)there at the end of this project.
creative brief The most challenging part of approaching this assignment was figuring out how to walk the line between what my classmates and I would consider enviable and Pinterest-worthy, and what would actually effectively sell the product. Switching from the attitude of making all of my projects beautiful to trying to look through this very simple, utilitarian lens was unnatural to me and took a few tries before I think I found the happy balance.
target audience: Horse owners themselves: this can be tricky because horse owners can be “cowboys” or “sissies in tight pants”, and catering to one could mean alienating the other.
product: Equine parasite medication
desired audience perception: Audience needs to realize that different medications attack different kinds of parasites, and rotating medicines is important to their horse’s health and happiness—and that our brand is an important step in that rotation.
project: Redesign the packaging for one variety of the many parasite medicines for horses on the market so that it is both visually appealing and easily identifiable for customers. purpose: For the purpose of the scenario, to distinguish our brand from the many others on the shelf and define our brand to customers. For the purpose of class, to design for a product that one wouldn’t consider a “creative” or “sexy” project.
current audience perception: “I’ve been buying brand-x for my horse forever, and they’re all essentially the same, right?”
unique selling proposition: Our formula is the only one on the market that can kill x-worm. Other medications are important, but ours is essential.
research For researching my problem, I spoke to one of my friends who raised horses and worked part-time at a stable. She pointed me in the direction of a few brands and websites that she considered “good horse design” and also told me that most horsepeople she knew were quirky mom types who preferred goofy, artsy designs for their products. I took this advice sparingly and assumed that these people must fit in with the “tight-pants” crowd, but I still let that idea influence one of my designs.
switch excercise For this exercise, we had to submit our working files and were assigned at random a classmate’s file to continue developing. Working on someone else’s design within someone else’s working file was, in a word, frustrating. The person’s work I had been assigned to revise was working with Illustrator instead of InDesign, and because Illustrator files cannot be packaged, I was working in unfamiliar territory without all the fonts and design elements I needed. It was kind of a headache. I eventually ended up just migrating what I could into InDesign to work on it there. His were actually some of my favorites of the initial layouts we had looked at in class, however, so there wasn’t a whole lot for me to change.
I realigned the text that ran along the bottom, and then combined some of his other ideas into the one I liked best (orange and blue, which interestingly enough gave me the idea of implementing a secondary color into my own package). All in all, while the process of working with an unfamiliar format was a challenge, I feel like the entire experience did give me some insight to use in my own work. Unfortunately, no one worked on my file so I did not learn very much from that experience. His versions are on the facing page, my version below.
design process My package went through a lot of stages, but I maintained the same colors throughout: I wanted a green that said “apples” without having to draw apples on the box, but I wanted a green that stood out from the other greens that every other deworming brand used. I settled on a bright, sour apple lime green. The orange came along during the development of “Giddyup” (a crowd favorite), and I kept it in the final product for contrast and added interest.
(ivermectin) 1.87% paste
net wt. 0.21 oz (6.8 g)
zimecterin
zimecterin
zimecterin
single-dose deworming medication for horses up to 1250 lbs.
zimecterin Overall, I’m happy with how my final product turned out. This is certainly a project I would not have tried on my own, and I’m glad to have been pushed a little outside of my comfort zone. I’m most satisfied with my color and font selection: my product looks very different from others on the shelf, and is attentiongrabbing while still being sanitary, professional, and clean. One of the things I’m not as happy with is my horse vector:
I wanted something simple that conveyed “horse” and “energy”, which I think is successful, but my horse looks a little too much like a sport horse— that is, not vague enough. I don’t know how to make my horse more general while still maintaining the movement and energy I wanted to convey.
shelf test I feel as though my piece held up well in both the classroom voting session and the in-house critique at Stewart & Associates; kind of middle of the road. In the classroom, mine was tied for first in my category, and at S&A, my color selection grabbed the attention of both Dan and Kate. Dan said it looked as though the medicine would taste good, which might appeal to horse lovers, which I was happy to hear as conveying the flavor without saying it explicitly was one of my goals. Dan did say that my horse vector was too specific and wouldn’t appeal to the common customer, but Kate disagreed and said that because it was only a silhouette, it remained ambiguous enough to not alienate anyone. I do kind of feel that we were set up to fail just a little bit: Dan was expecting something more experimental from us, while we had all already tried and exhausted and refined our more “out there” pieces into more realistic final products (RIP Giddyup).
the ethnic product project. The challenge is to design a label for an ethnic beverage or condiment. The product must come from Japan, The Caribbean, Thailand, Morocco, or Greece and feature motifs and themes consistent with the culture.
creative brief company / product: Tea Happy Jamaican Bush Tea
project description: Design a label for 3 different flavors of tea that are consistent with Jamaican culture but also appeal to an American audience. purpose of project: To practice implementing research into visual design as well as designing for a system. target audiences/personas: Men and women ages 20-30, though product could reach older or younger current audience perception: No one really knows anything about Jamaican tea or what kind of tea they drink.
desired audience perception: This beverage looks fun, refreshing, and natural. unique selling proposition: Herbal teas each have certain medicinal benefits and can be practically 0 calories depending on how much sugar is added. Additionally, Jamaica has a unique and vibrant cultural mindset, and if designed properly, Tea Happy can sell the attitude as much as it sells the tea.
visual inventory The first step in this project was to create a visual inventory so that we could see the world (read: competition) that our products would fit into so that we would have an idea of what to do to make them fit in that world but also stand out from the rest.
mood board The next step was to create a mood board of images, colors, patterns, and anything else that cemented our idea and feel for our culture before creating our labels. For this step, we had to also conduct physical research in the art library to include on our moodboard. This was a good experience because it forced me to look in places I wouldn’t typically look for ideas as pretty much 100% of my past research for projects has been online only. The library didn’t have much on Jamaican art in particular, but it did have quite a bit of Caribbean art to guide me thematically. In my research I found myself drawn to the bright colors and illustrative styles of Jamaican street art, music art, and counterculture.
sketching We had an in-class idea generation session in which we were given rapid prompts with about thirty seconds per prompt to sketch an idea. Most of mine were awful, but it did force me to look at the project in ways I normally wouldn’t.
These are some more fleshed-out sketches that I presented in class. While they went over prett y well, I did receive feedback that they didn’t really live up to the vision that I had established with my mood board. They needed to be denser and messier, so that’s when I started working towards a more collagestyle, postmodern design with island vibes. Someone also suggested that I use the girl from the pink label and create a character for each flavor, which was the direction I ended up taking. On the following page is my logotype development. From sketch to vector, it didn’t change a whole lot.
design process My design strategy consisted of combining my own hand-drawn illustrations with found images of fruits, textures, scenery, and flora from Jamaica into a vibrant mess of color.
These were the first draft versions of my three labels. I began designing before I had ordered the bottles that I would be working with so I wasn’t sure what size canvas to work on. I seriously undershot. These labels are shown full scale and would have been much too small for a 16oz bottle. The main problem I ran into when designing the full versions was how to modify the work I had already done to fit a completely new label. If I were to redo this project, selecting and ordering containers would be step 1.
The bottles I chose were square and had some unexpected flat corners that I had to change my design (again) to accommodate. My final labels featured a partial wrap that covered these corners and allowed the logotype to extend beyond the frame of the bottle’s front panel and allowed me to spatially separate the weight information from the main design. All three bottles have the nutrition info on a separate piece that covers the back panel and features a pattern used on the front to connect it to the main design without mimicking it.
Papa G was the first and probably the most successful of the series. I wanted each label to evoke an attitude as well as a flavor profile, and this one does both well.
My main struggle with Bloom Baby was making sure that the label didn’t read too feminine while maintaining the vibrant and colorful attitude that I wanted for the flavor. I received feedback that her pose read juvenile and juggled between keeping my original illustration and switching it out for a hands-at-her sides pose essentially right up to the deadline. I finally decided that because non-designer testers of my demographic that I had shown didn’t mind and that I personally preferred it to go with my gut and keep the original pose.
Pineapple Princess was the one to give me the most trouble. For whatever reason, I ran into trouble with the contrast every step of the way. I wanted to feature a diversity of skin tones in my characters, but ended up having to lighten PP’s complexion several shades from the first draft because she was simply printing out too dark and her facial features were being washed out. I changed the color of the logotype several times and still couldn’t find something that contrasted enough without breaking my color system. Even so, I’m still happy with how it turned out. I think the flavor of the tea reads very strong, especially with the addition of the candied ginger.
critique With roughly sixty pieces (three labels each to twenty students) to go through in three hours, critique for my work went by pretty quickly, but I did get a few good comments. As I already knew, the contrast on Pineapple Princess especially was very low and someone suggested that I match the logotype color to the color of the tea as I had (actually inadvertently) done with the other two. Someone else offered that the characters read as too cartoony and childish for my demographic. While I knew that this was a risk, especially with Bloom Baby, this feedback was from one out of twenty and I think that the mood and aesthetic that my illustrations give the piece is a fair trade-off. Finally, when asked how I could expand the Teahappy brand, I got lots of cool ideas like tshirts, a fashion line, and my personal favorite, surfboard designs for me to expand upon for my senior portfolio.
that’s it, that’s the end. Thank you so much for taking the time to look at some of my work. I hope the rest of your day is just super.
Emily Johnson ART 575 Professor Leslie Friesen University of Louisville Fall 2016