Interesting find featured on both LovelyPackage and TheDieLine

I stumbled across this beautiful work and was in awe - I'm a massive fan of purely type based designs, and die cut tags make me swoon. Was equally impressed when I started reading about the design. Both the cardboard and the twine used to tie it to the vegetables are 100% biodegradable so when discarded they create no waste, so don't adversely impact the environment.  As I read on I discovered  that the designer had taken it to another eco-friendly level and created a product that goes on step further than just being recyclable and gives something back to the earth - the paper has seeds embedded in the paper so it has a further use once no longer needed as packaging. 

So that's all well and good - great even, until just before I was about to move on, a couple of comments on the bottom of the post caught my eye, and brought up an issue I would have completely overlooked due to the intoxicating beauty of the typography. A large amount of energy would be 'wasted' in the production of these tags, more specifically in laser cutting the tags. Some argued that this 'cancelled out' the sustainability of the design. Which to me seems a little harsh, as it does use completely recyclable paper, but it did make me think about the production side of sustainable design, something that I'll now consider when creating my Sustenance packaging design. Very interesting!  

Assessment1 Sustenance Packaging Inspiration

So, even though the logo and identity part of this brief is due first, I am feeling alot more inspired to come up with packaging ideas! This is my first brainstorm after unpacking the brief.


Basic packaging brainstorm:
- happy meal style box, or small pizza style box from natural textured looking cardboard
- slip on label for different meals (easy production and printing)
- forest or woodland themed graphics
- fruit character themed graphics
- typography based graphics
- muted, natural colours to suggest sustainability/environmentally friendly but still bright    enough to engage young audiences
- range of simple fruit symbols for easy recognition of whats in each different meal box, to be placed on side of box label for easily visable if products are stacked on a supermarket shelf
- fun health facts on packaging
- sections inside box for different items to securely sit in place
- create symbols for 'gluten free' 'nut free' etc
- die cut of some kind


I also keep discovering inspiring packaging images!
These are some of my favourites so far from www.lovelypackage.com and www.thedieline.com

My opinion: Eye-catching, colourful packaging, simple yet effective logo, would appeal to a wide audience, young and fun looking, suggests the products are easy to use to create a complete meal. It has a number of elements that could work well for the Sustenance brief: a range of different colours on packaging to represent different meals, eye-catching contrast, style of logo , recyclable looking packaging. 

My opinion: Beautifully bright, absolutely love the white and bright on black, great font choice, simple and effective, memorable logo. Again, this work has a number of elements that could work well for the Sustenance brief: different colours for different flavours, eye-catching contrast, simple style of logo, although as much as I love the use of black plastic, I don't think it suggests eco-friendly as much as a raw brown stock. 

My opinion: This range uses the same black background that i love, this time combined with photographic images. The font choices suggest the product is fun and simple to use. It also uses bright rich eye-catching colours that suggests it will be delicious and rich in flavour. It would stand out well from competitors products on the supermarket shelf. 

I included this work as it uses the style of slip on label I want to use in my packaging design.


Too much awesomely designed packaging - totally side tracked from the logo I'm meant to be working on first.. concepts in my head, now to get them down on paper! 

Assessment1 Sustenance Research

After re-reading the Sustenance brief in preparation for starting my logo concepts, I decided to do a bit of research, in particular, looking at sustainable packaging in Australia.  
I found this definition (along with alot more information on sustainable packaging design) on the Australian Packaging Council website and found it summed it up well:


'A sustainable packaging and product supply chain might be defined as 'a system that enables goods to be produced, distributed, used and recovered with minimum environmental impact at lowest social and economic cost'.
http://www.pca.org.au/site/index.php/page/sustainability


Sustainability is so important today as consumers are becoming more and more aware of the impact of buying non recyclable products. Many consumers have developed a eco-conscience and will be strongly influenced to purchase products that adhere to sustainable practises both before purchase - when being manufactured, and after consumption - recyclability. 

Activity2 Part2 - Australian Colours

Activity2 Part1 - Abstracted Australian Symbol

This Activity involved choosing a recognisable Australian icon and creating a symbol out of it and experimenting with different rotation and reflections etc to create new abstract symbols. 

Identity Systems: Activity 1

Out of the list of Australian food and beverage companies I have chosen to look at The Natural Confectionary Company. Their logo is made up type surrounded by a range of fluid rounded shapes. I think that as their logo has a lot of type in it, especially long words, they used the surrounding shapes to separate the type, and create a kind of visual heirachy. As The Natural Confectionary Co. is all about natural ingredients, I think they chose to state 'No Artificial Colours, No Artificial Flavours' in the logo to emphasize this in a market where many products claim to be natural and healthy but often have hidden ingredients. 


Generally very bright colours are rare in nature. This logo uses muted hues of yellows and blue, to emphasize the message that their products are natural. This particular logo also features the small red and yellow 'Binka's' logo in reference to the original range of "No Artificial Colours, No Artificial Flavours' products, but on some packing this has been changed to a 97% fat free symbol. 


The logo mainly uses sans serif type in a young, slightly unrefined type style to further emphasize the 'naturalness' of the brand and the make the brand appealing to young audiences.