Packaging Design
Made Simple
Product: Sanitary Pad, Rice
Overview
Problem
Many commercial packaging existing today was designed with complicated layout and heavy use of colours. Overly complicated designs can sometimes be hard for consumers to understand it’s functionality. Additionally, many commercial packagings used a lot of plastics, which negatively impacting our ecosystem.
Outcome
This problem space shaped my concept of creating a packaging series that is minimalistic and easy to interpret yet, has a modern approach. I aimed to reduce plastic waste through removing the unnecessary use of plastic and using paper and cardboard as alternatives. Although it may be difficult to keep sanitary pad sustainable as it is a disposable item, we can certainly reduce the plastic use in the packaging.
Concept Statement
The main focus- rice packaging titled ‘简·约饭’, meaning ‘Simple Rice’, will be displayed in two languages- Chinese and English. The size of the rice grain graphic in the front cover indicates the type of grain (long or medium), while the sides of the packaging indicates the type of rice (brown or white). This ideology will be applied for both languages, meaning each side have indications written in English or Chinese. Here, I deliberately used two languages to demonstrate the visual elements. However, this concept can be reapplied in an international context. The back consisted of the extra information such as nutrition information, cooking method, etc.
For the sanitary pads titled ‘Simple Flow’. Again, the concept for my rice box will be conceptualised into the sanitary pad packaging. The front, consisting of a droplet icon in various sizes to indicate the flow (light-heavy). The back was portrayed with ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ to indicate day and night use. The side demonstrates the thickness of the sanitary pad and the font weight changes to match each thickness level. The other side consisted of a summary of the sanitary product with other extra details like instructions, barcode, etc. The bottom flap represented by a graphical depiction of wings, indicates whether the pad have wings or not. I’ve also purposely place it at the bottom because I wanted to create a visuallink to where the wings supposed to be stuck on.
Both packagings are created under the company named ‘Made Simple’. The logos share a similar visual prompt- a typography logo with a rounded graphic representation on the top right. I used typography logo because I want to follow the minimalistic theme to avoid over complicating the logo. Depending on the type of the product, the rounded graphic have a different visual representation yet the ‘roundness’ will still be presented. E.g. Rice symbol for rice packaging and flow symbol for sanitary pad.
Design Process
