Above: My Sandwich Bag Box Design (front)

During this critique session, Ashlee (one of my classmates) produced a beautiful matchsticks box. It was nostalgically decorated and had “To Build a Fire” by Jack London printed on the back of it. That really enchanted me. That piece of ephemera transported me for a moment to a warm fire with an outdoorsy man. She nailed it with mood and cultural references. Something that retro things do. We live in a culture constantly referencing the recent and distant past. This is not a new phenomenon, but perhaps with the dawn of the internet, it has become easy to mine our history for its artifacts.

 

Post-critique on my package:

Is it a condom box? Someone asked. This product doesn’t scream sandwich bags. Sandwich bags should be the subhead. People chimed in, how about using a sandwich spaceship or at least a sandwich bag in space. The genre needs to be pronounced at first glance, there might not be a second.

Other tricks I missed: indicate how it opens (this particular package opens from the front and Tom tried to open it from up top.) And add glitz. Packaging is not shy. It’s that caller at the fair “Come get your hotdogs! Get your hotdogs here!” And if you’re that guy, you’d better have some nice hotdogs.

(Earlier Post Relating to This Project)