All Design is Packaging Design
I used to think of boxes as bread used to carry some interesting spread to your mouth. I didn’t have any packaging in my industrial design portfolio because I lumped packaging with other “support” items, like a domain name and clever business cards, that make a product possible, but aren’t “purely” the fruit of design.
Last night I worked on the packaging design for Sorapot. Designing the box forced me to think more about the teapot’s shape than I had when I imagined it unpacked, sitting confidently on someone’s table, ready to make tea. Michael Beiruit describes the processes of speechwriting and graphic design as taking a “complicated bunch of ideas and reduc[ing] them to their arresting, memorable, engaging essence.” Beiruit could easily be talking about any creative process here, but his quote captures packaging design so well. A good box summarizes a product’s most conspicuous features through a very limited vernacular: a flat sheet of corrugated cardboard.
Sorapot itself is a package though; literally a holder for tea, but also a package for the tea ritual’s network of meanings. I designed it to emphasize green tea’s stand-out features, like unfurling leaves and bitterness that comes from boiling water. Sorapot’s designed around the shape of the tea ritual, just as its box is designed to hold and support its shape.
4 Comments
February 9th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Brilliant post. As soon as I read the title of this one, I said to myself “Of course!” Beautiful illustration and sweet design as well. Thanks for sharing!
September 17th, 2007 at 8:02 am
you have amazing idea, can you suggest some ideas about my ireon wire crafts for packing?
photo are at:
http://goshoppingchina.com/csexpress/photos/craftsarts/default.aspx?PageIndex=13
thank you
March 8th, 2008 at 2:55 am
hi! can you teach me how to make a package for an old aircraft toy?
March 14th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
[...] A check of his web site, however, revealed that this was not his first design for the package, but the culmination of a number of explorations. He had worked out an elaborate structural plan for making the entire box (top, bottom and inner support structure) from a single sheet of die-cut cardboard. [...]