Killer Products

Product packaging with directions on how to turn it into something new

Do you design your product down to the last details?

Everybody seems to be for sustainability, at least in theory. If you take your product design seriously, you should consider what to do with its packaging.

A good example comes from Joolz, a manufacturer of strollers for children. All of Jools packaging cardboxes come with instructions printed inside so that you can turn them into something new and useful. This includes the cardboxes for both the stroller and its accessories.

As Joolz explained in its recent announcement, “from a lampshade to a bird house and from a picture frame to a chair”. Joolz approach reduces waste and introduces kids to the habit of reusing materials.

What can you do to improve upon your products packaging? You can check previous Energisers on packaging here and here.

Posted by Damião Dias | [email protected]

 

Product Presentation: Are You Showcasing Your Products Right?

How come that you have putten so much thought into your new product, and so little into the way it will be presented to your clients when you’re not there to present it yourself?

Does the last sentence portrait your approach? More often than not it probably does.

So here are some examples of good packaging design to inspire you to do better this year:

Why should a good wine package serve only to get the wine bottle home? This wine package doubles as a wine rack once you get home, reducing waste while making the packaging appealing as a product by itself.

All milk seems to come in look alike cartons or bottles, so this experimental milk package took     a new approach, that seems much more engaging.

How can you make your own packaging more interesting or useful in your clients' eyes? I’m betting that if you commit a fraction of the effort that you dedicate to the development of the product that goes inside, you’ll likely reach interesting designs.

Posted by Damião Dias | [email protected]

Product Packaging Design

 

Why is it that for most industrial products, packaging design seems like an afterthought?

Food providers and FMCG companies have gotten it right for a long time. They know that you can have the best and most efficient product, but if nobody picks it up, it will not sell. On the other hand, if the client picks up your product while shopping, the chances he will buy have vastly improved.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but we do this everyday. We are faced with so much noise and information overload that we have learned to ignore most of what we see. For so many products, the product itself isn’t even on display. All you see is the package. So how do you differentiate from the competition?

Let’s take the example of water. It’s tasteless, odorless and colorless. Reason would say all water brands would be alike. But the LH2O bottle stands as one of my favorite examples of standing out amidst the competition.

On Nomad apple cider, texture, color and contrast cooperate to give you a more positive image of what is just fermented apple juice. You can develop a label to project calm, energy, vigor, all attributes that improve upon the specifics of your product and the story the client tells himself when he buys it.

(Image from: A’Design Award & Competition)

Bardahl is another example. At first look it looks like a bottle of soy sauce. That will make it stand out in the middle automotive fuel additives and cleaners.

A black package gives it a sense of being hip and cool (so you can raise selling prices), related to oil and motors (which is its market) and the difference between cleaner and additive is clearly shown (the main buying criteria for these products). So far so good

On the downside, too much text is added to such a small space. It becomes difficult to communicate individual features in a clear fashion and to maintain a visual hierarchy.

A better approach would be to develop specific icons, a new graphic language to communicate these specifications and benefits, which could be extended to the whole product line or to the whole brand. Icons are representative of ideas, and pass the message in a more effective way.

It is what Grandesign did for Becken in the packaging below.

The fact that they have both industrial designers and graphic designers working together from most product development phases, probably influences these results.

If you’ve decided to launch a new product, you should take special attention to both product and packaging design, to maximize your chances of success.

Your food for thought for this week:

1. Don’t leave your product packaging to the last minute. Often it is the first thing your client will see.
2. Is your communication clear? Have you used icons? Or are you counting on the client to make the effort to untangle all that is written on the package?
3. Does your package tell a good story? Which feeling does it convey? 
4. Will it engage your client? Will he want to pick it up? When placed in the middle of competing products does it stand out?

I know you can do it. But if you can't do it alone, ask for help!

Posted by Damião Dias | [email protected]

Packaging

Reusable to-go containers from Portland, USA, received the 2012 BEST Award for Sustainable Services

GO Box is a new, innovative service providing reusable to-go containers to downtown Portland food vendors and their customers. With GO Box, you can get your meal in a reusable, durable container.

Most of us consume large amounts of plastic every year, and in the packaging field we have had little success in reducing, reusing and recycling.

As a mission-driven company whose goal is “doing away with throw away,” GO Box offers a unique service for the flourishing food cart industry, and also serves as a model for other to-go food settings.

• Innovated the first and only service of its kind in Portland.
• Met a strongly voiced need from customers and food carts to avoid one-time use disposable containers. In a recent survey, food cart customers ranked getting rid of throw-away containers as one of the top improvements food carts could make.
• Downtown Portland food cart customers throw away roughly 60,000 to-go boxes every month – nearly 65,000 pounds of waste every year. Since July 2011, GO Box has prevented the use of more than 2,000 disposable containers.
• Offers food vendors an opportunity to save money, cut waste and attract eco-minded customers.
• Expansion beyond food carts is in consideration for event venues, grocery stores and restaurants offering take-out, and festivals. Other cities have requested assistance in duplicating this offering.

Your food for thought:

1. How can you innovate or redesign your packaging to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic?
2. How can you design your packaging to be better suited to the logistics platform you use?
3. How can you integrate both packaging and logistics to reduce the carbon footprint of your product during the whole product lifecycle?
4. Do your customers care?

I hope you can. But if you can't to it alone, don't hesitate and ask for help!

Posted by Damião Dias | [email protected]

Packaging Design: The LH2O Bottle Example

Is packaging just covering the product or is it something more? There are times when packaging is the whole product.

 

Consider the example of the water bottle. Most people have water on tap at home, with high standards of quality, and would therefore seldom need to buy bottled water.

 

On the other hand, for water companies all over the world, water has almost no cost to produce. It sprouts from the ground. It also does not have any distinguishable features from “other waters”. Pure water, by definition, has no flavor, color or odor. So how to get the consumer to go for your water brand instead of the competition’s?

 

Packaging is the solution. It is the only way to distinguish your product at the Point Of Sale.

 

Packaging also represents an important part of the product cost. Since water is “free”, the client will be paying for the water packaging + cost of transportation to the Point Of Sale. You see where I am going, don’t you? You better think long and hard on the packaging of your product.

 

LUSO (a Portuguese water brand), developed in 2009, in partnership with PEDRITA (Design) and LOGOPLASTE (Technical Development and Industrialization) the LH2O Bottle.

 

This new design, makes possible the stocking of bottles with no empty spaces between them (empty space translates to paying to transport air), and at the same time it represents a completely new conceptual image, easily distinguishing the LUSO brand at the moment the client must make his choice between competing brands.

 

Judge by yourself. Which would draw your attention before buying: this bottle, or one of the 20 other standard-look-alike bottles present on the shelf?

 

We will go into the product engineering difficulties in later posts when addressing blow molding technique. For now, I hope you enjoy this new concept. and that it will help inspiring you. Cheers!

Posted by Damião Dias | [email protected]

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