A recent visit to the deli counter at Target yielded an interesting consumer experience brand extension. It’s a small detail, yet answers a very basic quandary.
Ever leave a deli or carry out without a utensil with which to eat? Enter this little innovation.
Forget Finger Food
The lid of the food container has a small thermoformed cavity that’s roughly the shape of the head of a spoon. In this cavity is a “folded” spoon with a living hinge and a snap-fit tab that transforms it into a fully functional utensil roughly 2/3 the length of a normal plasticware spoon.
Putting a Finger on Innovation
A need was identified and with some simple ingenuity a smart solution was borne. While it won’t change the world, it is genius.
With this week’s Sirius-XM merger approval, we take a nostalgic look back at our XM packaging experience.
About the Project
Packaging is a part of modern life. This article, an insight into the design of a consumer package for satellite radio provider XM, includes many aspects of a typical package development process. In the interest of time, we’ll skip research, diagnostic and technical methodology phases and concentrate on the basic iterative process steps in this article.
Contracted as a co-branded piece with equipment manufacturer, Delphi, the XM package is designed to contain a variety of product configurations while meeting the requirements of multiple retailers.
Thumbnails (above: click for larger view)
The first stage of the package design process is broad idea generation with an eye toward reasonable possibility through the use of quick sketches called thumbnails—essentially a Brainstorm session on paper.
Even in this early ideation phase, function and manufacturing objectives established in earlier logistic explorations are at the forefront of the design rationale.
A plump and friendly ovate design—suitable for both pegged and stand-alone shelf display—captured the team’s attention. It features an interchangeable outer shroud designed to accommodate variable messaging and XM product differentiation.
Rough Refinements (above: click for larger view)
Of the 32 initial thumbnails, five are selected for tighter “rough? conceptual sketches. The rough design stage serves several purposes. Roughs allow the customer to collaborate in a conceptual dialog with both Brainstorm and their own internal team.
In addition, roughs allow the design team to further reconcile a host of issues—from substrate selection to detail and aesthetic considerations. Increasingly the form is discussed with a heightened sensitivity to relative manufacturing requirements and capabilities.
Although computer-generated designs are great for visualization, introducing them too early in the development process can consume allotted resources and generate fewer options. Furthermore, their finished look can ignite concerns about exhausting budgets without the benefit of conceptual buy-in.
Design Control Drawings (DCD) (above: click for larger view)
DCD drawings are to final fit and finish what roughs are to concepts. In this case, the forms are expressed as orthographic projections, i.e., front, right side and plan (top) views.
The primary intent of this phase is to convey relative proportions and relationships between forms within the package, i.e., to “control? the design. A rough and wispy hand drawn line could mean anything to a packaging engineer. Conversely, detailed and dimensioned schematics begin to define a working reality.
Of course, many issues were addressed during the XM DCD phase: Drop test considerations, proper cavity allowance for nested accessories, marrying the outer shroud with the stand-alone clamshell, substrate selection and opacity levels, inherent multi-part clamshell tooling considerations, etc.
Rapid Prototyped 3D Model (above)
Project participants hailed from several continents. So, to help bridge geographic and language-based barriers, we produced a quick 3D model based on data and dimensioning extrapolated from the vector-based DCD drawings. The model proved a useful discussion tool in describing general functions of the package.
Aesthetic and Messaging (above: click for more initial design examples)
Although this article primarily explores the physical form development of a package, the aesthetic process is important enough to warrant an article of its own.
Some aspects of messaging development begin as early as the thumbnail stage. However, on many levels, full graphic exploration doesn’t begin until a form factor direction is set. At retail, messaging and brand continuity are crucial.
A Finished Package (above: click for larger view)
Although concessions were made along the way, the completed two-part package is remarkably similar to the original concept design in form and function.
According to their tagline, The Greener Grass.org is “Collaborating to design a better future.” With that and your health in mind, they created the Vessel concept, a system of components and options that would allow you to customize a drink to fit your personal tastes as well as your health and lifestyle needs.
With these three main bases and countless options, it’s about as far removed from today’s mainstream beverage model as you can get.
Bases: Nutrients to fit your lifestyle and demographic needs such as iron and calcium for women, or zinc and saw palmetto for men.
Flavors: Organic extracts to sate your specific tastebuds—everything from chocolate to wheatgrass, mango to mocha, or any imaginable combination in between.
Agents: Active ingredients like vitamins, minerals, and energy boosters for functional benefits—you name it, proteins or taurine, caffeine or ginseng—whatever you need.
The concept includes a reusable Vessel Lexan™ container strategically designed for optimum ingredient agitation.
Making the Concept Count
Programmatic design, packaging and convenience count in brand marketing. Whether or not the Vessel line ever comes to fruition, the concept is far more believable and supportable when visualized as a fully-branded product rendering.
Strong concepts become real through strong visualization.
Brainstorm took a break from .think during December to focus on our clients’ increased holiday workloads, and create our own brand of holiday fun at North Pole, Inc. (NPI).
More Parody
Initially created to thank, entertain, and interact with our clients, the project featured a daily website post detailing the mirthful trials and tribulations of NPI’s Executive Vice President, Cindy Klaus, and their larger-than-life CEO, Kris Kringle. By months’ end, the integrated print/online parody expanded virally to include a far broader audience, including Cindy Klaus’ own Twitter following.
Friendly Links
Visitors were encouraged to leave a greeting with the added incentive of winning a B brilliant t-shirt or Kris Kringle chocolates. We received a nice holiday surprise ourselves with many unsolicited links to the NPI site. Here are a couple of our favorites:
A Viddler Unboxing showed a video of the “unboxing” of one of our Kris Kringle chocolates.
Thanks and Happy New Year
To all who visited and participated, thanks for the links, comments, emails, calls, Twitter tweets, and Facebook posts. Happy New Year. It’s good to be back.
Wild Bunch & Co.: Healthy product, company-sponsored recycling, and business savvy. What’s not to like?
A Well-Branded Bunch
Kudos to Seed of the U.K., for their comprehensive branding, packaging and website design for the Wild Bunch & Co.’s line of organic products.
Seed is prominently noted as the design firm of choice at the bottom of Wild Bunch’s website—a clear message of partnership and a vote of confidence for both parties.
A Good Deal, Naturally
Perhaps a deal was struck, or maybe it’s simply a reflection of European culture long known to honor design firms in such ways. But you get the sense Wild Bunch recognizes the intrinsic value in honoring Seed.
Relative Greatness
By displaying Seed’s name, Wild Bunch has naturally imposed age-old motivators—peer pressure and pride in craft. Any self-respecting company allowed to hang its name on its customer’s shingle will likely live up to it.
Keep up the good work. May Savage Cabbage taste as good as it looks.
under Branding. Grouped by topic, Alltop aggregates stories from “all the top” sites across the web (that’s their story and we’re sticking to it). View our .think listing, here: branding.alltop.
Here’s a free Mac app allowing you to call up, via customized abbreviations, any text string you copy and paste frequently. Best of all the text is placed pre-formatted - returns, bullets and all. It’s become a staple here at Brainstorm. You can download your own at app4mac.
If you can get past the vapid brand identity and UI, PimpMyNews, the talking social news site, is an interesting concept. The site will read your RSS feeds to you over your mp3 player, iPhone, etc. or computer.
[via: PR-Squared]
NPI’s personal cosmos transport. Like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine Happiness Machine, the iPlanet, a holiday product parody, promises a “thoroughly self-absorbed social media experience.”
Robert Scoble explores the notion in this BusinessWeek piece re: the running debate over where we’re headed with aging, albeit ubiquitous, email paradigms versus spam-free Tweets.
[via: Scobleizer]
Track the Hive’s Buzz
Aggregate the aggregators at Popurls.com—simultaneously follow the most current posts from all the top sites like Digg, Newsvine, YouTube and Flickr. Or, “find your favorite thing,” over at Buzzfeed.
Peter Bruhn’s Swedish type foundry is preparing a new freshet of fonts to flow forth and flourish among us—according to Typographi and Bruhn himself.
[via: Sheer Brick]
Can’t see how your two soda bottles a day are impacting the environment? Chris Jordan’s images will help you visualize it. View his amazing statistical depictions at Running the Numbers, An American Self-Portrait.
Okay this would just be a goofy flash-based Spirograph-esque toy if it didn’t generate downloadable .svg (Scalable Vector Graphic) files—which it does. Pattern enthusiasts, meet Qbesq.
Enter at your own risk. A proof of concept that design does matter. Havenworks.com hailed on Digg recently as perhaps, “…the most poorly designed website in the world!”
