Sustainable packaging redesign

The Project

This is a student project of mine with the goal of redesigning a company's current packaging to be more sustainable. In this project I realized that as a designer I have more influence on the environment than most because I am able to influence my clients and focus my work on more sustainable solutions.

The company I chose for this project was Temptations cat treats. I have three cats of my own who I buy Temptations treats for, I have noticed many times in the store that most pet treats and dry foods are packaged primarily in plastic bags. Not only is this not sustainable but myself and many other cat owners find their cat's chewing through these bags time and time again.

The Process

After selecting my the product packaging I wanted to redesign, I began to research sustainable packaging materials. The new packaging had to be air tight and food safe to keep the product fresh and safe for consumption. I created sketches of a few possible package templates but ended up choosing one that resembled a milk carton. This new packaging will stand out on the shelves in the cat treat isle at stores without the need to invent a new kind of packaging. The material used for this packaging would mainly be paperboard, just like traditional milk cartons however I used a waxed interior for waterproofing rather than plastic coating. This way it would be more sustainable, since the packaging doesn't actually need to hold liquid the waxed layer is only for freshness and protection. Next I tested out a 3D version of the template to make sure everything worked as expected before I began designing.

The next step was to collect all the assets needed for the design. I redrew the temptations logo because I couldn't find a high quality download, then I created icons for each flavour and a little cat for a mascot. Then I typed out all the text I would need for each package in french and english.

After I had all my data I created the digital template for the packaging, this way I knew exactly how. much space I had for all of my assets and text. I began to organize what would need to be on each side of the package. The most challenging part of this process was making the french text fit, it always ran longer than the english so I had to keep resizing and moving elements around to account for that. My end goal was to create the packaging for three of their treat flavours as well as a box to hold all three as a tetra pack version. Once I had all of the individual packages laid out properly the tetra pack box was easy to create by copying pieces from the individual packages.