Quirky DIY Box

Storage combined with fun and topped with a handsome printed façade is the key to any storage product. Finding new and innovative designs is always a challenge but sometimes it is good to take a simple design and take an aspect of the past.

We recently discovered these quirky retro boxes and love them. The simplistic design is made more interesting because of the façade, which gives a sense of nostalgia and familiarity.

The fun aspect of these boxes is the DIY aspect. Simple slotting together provides a quick set up with out leaving the user bored and frustrated. The perfect balance between time taken to assemble and the difficulty mean that any family member can use these. Perfect!

Here is a quick video of an assembly we did in our office. The box proved very popular and we assembled it many times.

Creative Packaging Design

In order to effectively sell and promote products, designers must create an innovative way to display and sell that product to the consumer. Interesting graphics and innovative packaging design makes a product more exciting to customers, it entices people into experiencing before they purchase simply from the outer visual representation.

Of course, there are many different brands who sell the same product, many of which have little differences. The food and drinks industry is a great example of this, they rely heavily on graphic designers to design innovative point of sale displays and packaging concepts in order to attract customers towards their brands.

As mentioned before in the ‘Regenerating Design’ blog post, tea is considered one of the seven necessities of Chinese life. It is a traditional Chinese beverage served with almost every Chinese meal, in which case it is a product that is made up of many competitive brands, all of which rely on designers to help set them apart from one another. Drinking tea is a hand’s on process; although there are several traditional methods, the more modern and efficient form of drinking tea is simply by using tea bags and designers have used this to their advantage and created many innovative and humorous forms of storing and using tea bags.

Designing humorous packaging is a great way to sell a product, exploiting the product in a funny or unusual way intrigues customers into purchasing from that brand over any other. Hanger Tea are a great example of this, these tea bags, packaged as if they are hanging in your wardrobe is a very unusual yet humorous way to attract customers to buy this brand over any other mainstream tea brands. The good thing about incorporating humor into packaging design is that many people choose to buy so that they can not only use the product inside but continue to display the product at home as it where on the shop shelf. The concept of adding characters or popular figures on to tea bags makes preparing and drinking tea more fun than usual, especially to those who drink tea every day.

For those who enjoy good quality tea, high end packaging designs such as the Tea Forte are used in for more expensive brands up-market restaurants and cafés. This concept is very aesthetically pleasing; the classy and stylish packaging design is not only functional but could be perceived as a work of art.

A normal and common ritual to the Chinese culture can become much more fun and interesting through the design of different display and packaging. Even though each brand may be similar in taste, a distinct brand identity and creative presentation to the consumer will bring about more brand recognition. 

China, loving their porcelain..

One thing I really noticed in China is the beautiful sinks. In luxury homes, bars and restaurants it is most likely that there will be a very nice designed sink. The sinks are designed in a different and unique way. The big difference between the sinks back in the West and the sinks here in China is that the sinks often rest on the bathroom furniture or kitchen cabinet rather than being incorporated into the furniture. Most of the time the sinks are bowl shaped and the taps are very beautiful and uniquely shaped.                                                                        
My favorites are the faucets’ glass circles that ensure that the water comes from the tap in a graceful way. Also it is very often the Chinese taps give a waterfall effect to the water.

The sinks we are used to back in the west are most of the time very casual, as opposed to the wilder shapes here. Here in China every time I come in a new bathroom or kitchen, the beautiful sinks get me excited.

"Lighting The Way" For Street Light Design

On a recent trip to a more rural, traditional part of the country, Guilin ( 桂林）and surrounding areas, it came to my attention that the Chinese people like to add character in their streets using the humble lamp post.

In almost every other town or city lamp post are uniformed, orderly, cheap and efficient. Normally the Chinese people have this same attribute however in rural small areas they believe form is a greater asset than function.

On this trip there were many styles of lamp post, from lantern shaped ones, to standard ones but with a painting, or perhaps a kink in the post, up to, LED tree hung lamps that appeared like water falls, canopies that made night stars and planets, then all the way to out right eccentric.

It just shows that in a world that is trying to become a standardized place, sometimes breaking that rule makes a great difference in the feel and atmosphere of the area.