Hi everybody!
It´s so fun to finally be actively working with our packaging and the concept around it! It´s been a fun and an eventful week with a lot of cutting cardboard, though also a frustrations about measurements, and a lot of long nights working at school on this project. Its been a lot of fun and people seem to really be inspired to make fun and exiting packaging solutions.
During this week we had a lot of assignments around understanding and creating different forms of packaging and the science and structure behind a good form, but we also got a task to make a “mood-board” to show during our meeting with Niklas, Anna-Sara and a guest lecturer Ida Hansson. We began the process around the “Mood board” by going through what kind of fonts, color and forms we might want to include on our packaging, but also by going to feel and examine different types of carton to see what best could withstand our product and the problems that it might have on the structure of the carton. After we laid out the groundwork for this “mood board” we went online where we tried to find inspirational pictures and patterns to inspire us in our process and show what kind of vision we have for our product and it´s packaging. We also wanted to show a personal touch on this board so we decided to make our own patterns and structures to show some examples of what we have in mind for further pattern development for the finished product.
In parallel with the “mood board” mentioned above we spent a lot of time on creating different types of packaging for our product. We will mention our process for our two concepts below:
Brown jar-idea
We started our process with the idea of making a round shape for the box, but we soon figured our that it would be difficult to make a circular shape without having to exclude a lot of design-area so we went on to make a box with a hexagon-shape to solve this problem. Later during the week we started to question if it would be smart to just have this hexagonal-shape because we get so many different sides of the box, but theres basically no room to make any patterns or designs on.
Finally we decided to make a box with a more rectangular shape to get more room to make patterns and designs on. Instead of making an detachable lid we decided to integrate it with the basic structure of the box. We thought this would be a really cool and innovative way of creating a candle/pot box. We are very happy with this design and think it will be a base or the structure for our future finished product and box!
One problem we did face with this structure was that the jar kind of rattled around within the structure so we made kind of a sleeve for it that is flushed with the structure to resolve said problem. We started with a small sleeve that would stand on the bottom of the box, but this did not solve the question around where the seeds and soil would go..So we did yet another prototype with this sleeve system, BUT with a box underneath it, though this seemed like an ok solution we thought we could refine it a bit. we then decided to make this sleeve system with an attached box but the problem with that one was that the jars weight weighted down the sleeve and thus making the design obsolete. To solve this problem we made another prototype we made the same lid of the outer structure on the inner box and this worked perfectly! Though this was a good solution we though it would be more environmentally friendly to make a box without sections that have to be glued together. We then made the final prototype with tabs that connected the different parts of the structure and thus made the glue obsolete.
We will show the prototype process below:
Plant-idea
We had a harder time than with the Jar-box when it come to the box we wanted to make for the pot-idea. Because we want to make it so that the plant doesn’t get hurt during the boxing process or in the process of taking the product out of said packaging we kind of hit a bit of a wall….BUT we soon found a solution! To connect the two products under the same producer we thought it would be fun to make the same structural box for the plant-idea but make it so that its an open structure that you have to fold yourself! by doing this you, as the buyer etc, can easily protect the plant´s leaves from damage during the packaging process!
We also started to talk about how to make the most sustainable environment for the plant during its travels from the store to the byers home. One solution we came to was to make a perforated pattern on the box surface that the buyer can use to make it possible to either let sun in to the plant on sunny days or to protect it from cold during winter by not using them!
This week has been such a fun and an eventful time with lots of inspirational work and creativity! Hopefully the coming weeks will be as fun and inspirational, but now Tilda and I are going to get some lunch because we are starving!
xoxox,
Beatrice Gilberg
Tilda Berkö