Designing three different shipping boxes to accommodate various combinations of personal care and hygiene products for a luxury travel amenity company.
ArtiosCAD
There were 3 different types of products to be included in the boxes:
Boxed gift set
Bottles
Short miscellaneous products
The client already had requirements for each box. Each box would hold a different amount of products and would be different sizes.
The largest box had to include their boxed gift set and any combination of two bottled products.
The medium box had to include a combination of 4-5 different-sized products. This would serve as a box for a customizable gift set of 4-5 products the customer can mix and match.
The small box was more straightforward and only needed to hold two bottled products.
Knowing that the boxes had to accommodate products that weren’t exactly the same size, I started out by taking stock of the sizes of each product.
From there I could start sketching out layouts for each box size.
The client wanted this box to have the gift set in the middle with a bottled product on each side. The compartments for the bottled products would have to be 2 inches wide to accommodate the largest bottle width (the shampoo bottle).
Large layout sketch
The medium box had to be more versatile to accommodate 4-5 different products without using unnecessary space and material. Knowing I couldn’t satisfy every combination of products, I designed a layout that had 2 different sizes of compartments where each compartment could fit at least 3 of the possible products.
Medium layout sketch
The client wanted either a hexagonal or octagonal box that could hold 2 of the bottled products. In order to fit 2 bottles next to each other the length of the box had to be at least 4 inches and the width at least 3 inches.
Small layout sketch
In the end I was able to design 3 different sized boxes accommodating 7 different products. Each box was prototyped using a white cardboard to look more refined. The boxes also left room for any type of decorative tissue paper or shredded paper the client would want to use to elevate the packaging.
This project made me more aware of business needs as a designer. I had to design these boxes with aesthetics, branding, usability, and cost efficiency in mind. This was most obvious when working on the medium box. I realized it was not practical to design a medium-sized box that could accommodate every combination of products without being too bulky or using too much material. Despite this I was able to optimize the customization of the box within these limitations.