Week Six

My hot sauce rebrand was a success! 

Our class did a new way of critiquing I've never done before. We first picked a random classmates project then broke into small groups and critiqued them. From those small groups we picked the strongest of the three and then shared our thoughts with the class. We then lined everyone's projects up on the steps in the gallery and ranked them from A+, B+, B- and then needs approved. We could only have 4 on each letter level and the rest would have to be in the "needs approved" pile. 

It was a heart-wrenching experience at first with hearing/having to give some brutal honesty, however it was very beneficial. Especially with a packaging project, having immediate and honest comments was important. Our classmates became potential consumers and we had to all compare the effectiveness of our design not to how well we fixed the design from the original, but also how are designs compared to each other. 

I received a lot of positive comments on mine and thankfully I made it to the top tier. I got a lot of questions on how I got the wood texture to look the way it did (it was gloss ink) and they loved the bold and brightness of it. An improvement they suggested was to increase the size of some of the copy because it is a little too small. 

I asked a few of the students in the small group what they thought of the yellow top not matching the yellow in the design. They stated the top plastic yellow would have been too overpowering in the design so they thought my choice of the softer yellow worked. They also thought that maybe a future improvement could be making the top the orange color from the design and not the yellow.

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After finishing our critiques we were briefed on our next assignment. Our task to create a series for a current brand that is composed of different packaging shapes but for similar products. An example Professor Mata shared would be a bottle for liquid bath soap, a pouch for bath salts and a container for lotions. We are also to focus on making these product eco friendly as well.

My mind went running in all different directions. I needed a series of three that could fit a current brand but be unique enough that I break away from the current brands restraints and make it eco friendly. I went right to Pinterest to start. I looked for series of different products and stumbled on a lot of makeup products or beauty for women. I began thinking about women's care and thought of feminine products. The products themselves aren't very eco friendly, but over the past few years tampon and pad alternatives have began to become more popular. 

I continued digging and I decided on creating a three part set of feminine care products: tampons without applicators (no need to create and use wasteful plastic), menstrual underwear that replaces pads (and is washable) and a mensural cup that is completely reusable. For the company brand I want to model, I chose Tampax/Always (I found through research that both are owned by P&G) as I feel I can make this set of products fit into their line up and their logo is more versatile with it just being text.

Through my Google searching I found that Tampax does not have applicator free tampons, Always does have underwear but it is disposable, and Tampax does have a cut product already. However, as I was speaking to Professor Mata about, a lot of period products appear very medical and sterile which important, but with a eco-conscious product like a reusable menstrual cup I would want more green and calming, not glossy, shinny, plastic.

My original thought was to use just different sizes of a traditional box shape, but then I found a website that has resizable dielines I could still use that would add some unique features to the packaging and could encourage reuse of the package. 

http://templatemaker.nl/en/

My goal for the rest of this week and weekend is to continue researching and deciding on a set direction.

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Sustainability Powerpoint 3 Things I Found Interesting:

1 Sustainability encompasses three domains: financial, social, and environmental. Not only can sustainability benefit the environment, but also, for example, a companies finances with having the opportunity to limit reproduction or material costs when using more sustainable materials.

2. The design strategies or reduce, reuse, and recycle can be broken down into further categories that relate to dematerialization, localization, durability and disassembly (just to name a few). When I think of sustainability in packaging or eco friendly products my first thought is how important the materials can be recycled. However, in this presentation I learned how suitability goes beyond recycling but also addresses making products more durable so they don't have to be regularly replaced or considering their reuse so they can have another purpose beyond just the trash can. 

3. Focusing more on local production and material usage can greatly benefit a products sustainability. Think beyond just the end products environmental conscious and also consider what energy and negativity on the environment was was released in collecting the materials to make your product.