Can you imagine a dolphin jumping up when making tea?

There is a tea bag company called ocean teabag in Japan. Because of its small size, it is difficult to compete with the leading companies in the tea field. After some discussion, I decided to try a method different from the traditional tea bag design, hoping to get more users through differentiated creative marketing.

In 2019, ocean teabag cooperated with the creative Bookstore VIL age vanguard to create the "Ocean Series" creative tea bags, which wrap the matching tea varieties with different marine animal shapes.

For example, the dolphin shaped tea bag soaked in blue butterfly bean flower tea is like a little dolphin swimming in the ocean.

This creative tea bag has won high attention for the originally unknown company. At present, ocean teabag has more than 19000 followers on twitter. Everyone is full of interest and desire to buy this healing creative tea bag.

Through creative packaging design to achieve sales growth, the brand is reshaped by the Russian dairy brand milgrad.

In Russia, dairy products account for 22% of the FMCG market, and milgrad was once an unknown member of this highly competitive market. In order to help the brand increase sales, milgrad decided to change the packaging to make it its own product advantage, so it achieved this lovely cat box with a variety of hidden playing methods. By assembling four milk bottles in different directions, consumers can get three kittens of different shapes.

In order to enjoy the fun of assembling cute cats, netizens who love collecting will choose to buy milgrad's boxed milk once or many times, and others at the same time

Milgrad products printed with cat patterns have also become the object of collection. Milgrad has become a net star in the dairy industry, and has been out of the circle in China, Japan and other countries.

Whether dolphin tea bags or cat milk boxes, we can find that they are not limited to "explaining" the products, but stimulate consumers' curiosity and curiosity through differentiated packaging.

So why is this design loved by consumers? Today we will analyze their charm.

Inspiration comes from life

Life is a kind of original inspiration, ranging from the shark skin structure swimsuit worn by Phelps to the aircraft invented according to the principle of bird flying, are the inspiration that designers constantly explore the essence of life and find from nature and daily life.

There are also many packaging designs inspired by life in the food and beverage industry. Let's enjoy them together.

Do not do packaging, do nature's porter

What is the packaging that gives people the dreamy smell of the sea?

This conch shaped packing box designed by Taiwan chengshuang design and manufacturing Institute for a marine theme chocolate shop in France, with white and clean color matching and colorful chocolate, seems to be a chocolate gift box from the mysterious ocean kingdom.

Also packaged with ocean theme is its product deep-sea tuna crisp.

Food laboratory

Three tuna in different colors are used in the package, representing three different tastes. The bubble shape and water ripple on the box highlight the fresh marine temperament. Seeing the package, it seems to smell the salty sea water.

The packaging of Tyrannosaurus Rex popsicles designed by designers Sasha Perelman and Katya mushkina for Russian ice cream brand Dino ice was inspired by dinosaur archaeological excavation.

Silhouettes of various dinosaurs can be vaguely seen in the middle of the translucent popsicle in the shape of ore. when children see the packaging, they can't help but want to dig dinosaur fossils, and capture the hearts of target consumers in just a few seconds.

In addition to finding inspiration from animals, some designers will also find inspiration from the living habits of animals. For example, in the packaging of supha bee farm's 100% pure honey product, the honey bottle is placed in an enclosure similar to a honeycomb.

Consumers open the packaging box and take out the honey, just like just taking out the honey from the honeycomb, intuitively convey the product characteristics of 100% pure honey. The carton materials used in packaging also reflect the theme of nature and environmental protection.

In addition to animals, plants are also common natural elements in many food packaging.

For example, for Kennedy's orange flavored fruit candy, the sugar packaging box is designed to set up a cut orange, and the process of consumers opening the sugar box is like cutting the orange in half, as if the sour and sweet orange juice will flow out of the gap the next second.

In addition to animals and plants, what inspiration can nature give us?

TNO water drop tea is packaged in the shape of water drop. After opening the outer package, there are small isomorphic sub bottles inside, which is convenient for carrying and single drinking. The morphology of water droplets simulates the extraction process, which is consistent with tea, a liquid product.

Wrap up a sense of ceremony and find inspiration from fireworks

In addition to finding inspiration from nature, there are many good ideas in daily life.

For example, the childhood tea bag uses the form of clothes hanger to make the tea bag look like small clothes.

This ingenious design fills consumers' sense of experience. Some consumers commented: "the design of this small dress is really healing. Choose one in the wardrobe every day. It can be said that the sense of ceremony is very in place."

Also wearing clothes, tomitashuzo, a Japanese sake manufacturer, directly wore kimonos and lace skirts on wine bottles.

The curve of the wine bottle is like the graceful posture of a girl. The white red silk cloth and white lace set off the girl's pure and ignorant temperament, reflecting the clear and pure taste of the wine.

Pietro Gala, the spaghetti brand, integrates the image of the product and the chef. Buyers can directly see the spaghetti through the transparent film, emphasizing the natural health of pasta, so as to generate positive emotions for consumers.

How to "add icing on the cake" for products when "carrying" packaging from life?

We found that most of the cases mentioned above adopted a design technique called bionic design. It refers to that packaging designers use the color, modeling, texture and other morphological characteristics of natural organisms, use rich imagination and superb design skills, and make these natural forms show in the packaging appearance through artistic processing. Bionic design is very popular among consumers and has always occupied a great proportion in the award-winning works of major packaging competitions in the world.

In fact, whether it comes from natural bionic design or from the design of living objects, they are actually doing one thing: imitation and creation. We know that in addition to the original packaging and the role of protecting products, the commercial value of packaging is increasingly expected by brands. They need to play the role of "icing on the cake" for products.

So, from what dimensions can these life-based designs play their commercial value?

0.2 seconds to capture the hearts of consumers

Japanese packaging design master sasada Shiren once mentioned in his packaging design book "design power of 0.2 seconds": the time for shopping guests to bring goods into sight is only 0.2 seconds before passing the shelf. If you want to make customers marvel at this moment and are willing to stop, you must rely on eye-catching packaging.

The packaging that uses life elements usually continuously enhances the visual impact of product packaging because of its unique shape, bold color matching and other factors, so that consumers can easily be attracted by the bionic packaging with unique design when facing the shelves full of goods.

For example, Mengniu's cute cow head pure milk packaging, black-and-white cow head design and cocked cow ears stand out in a number of regular rectangular white milk boxes.

See through the essence of the product at a glance

In addition to labels, how can people perceive the characteristics of products more intuitively through packaging?

Russian brand design Kian studio designed the packaging design for soy mamelle vegetable milk. The whole bottle body is designed into the shape of a cow, highlighting the characteristics that the product is a dairy product. However, the green stripes on the cow and the green leaves on the neck clearly distinguish the vegetable milk from the traditional milk, and intuitively tell consumers that the product is "100% vegetable milk".

The chili sauce packaging designed by Shenzhen Bob for farmer Wangtian directly applies the characteristics of raw pepper to the packaging. Each pot of chili sauce has chili patterns of different colors. What's more, the cover of chili sauce is designed into the shape of chili pedicle, which is hung on the tree, which expresses the freshness of the product like real chili.

However, due to the consideration of material search and production cost, in actual production, brands often can only choose ordinary materials for packaging, so it is difficult to imitate the texture of banana and kiwi fruit, resulting in a great reduction in the similarity of bionics.

Make the packaging full of emotion

Seeing the above packaging case, do you feel cured if you are tired at work or at the end of the day?

In the general environment of "internal roll" of the whole people, many consumers are eager to get some cure in their daily life, but the high-intensity study and work make them "too far away from life".

How to add a touch of emotional color to the product and create a small happiness for people in life? It can also be done through packaging.

Traditional product packaging mainly focuses on the expression of selling points and bright colors, but it always seems ordinary or even cold. This design work from Norwegian designer mats ottdal turns the traditional Tetra Pak packaging into a charming little penguin, which is very healing.

The cat ear bottle cap launched by Suntory on the day of the Japanese cat also adds a little caution to the packaging. The merchant creatively designed the bottle cap into the shape of a cat's ear, so that people can feel the healing smell of mengmengda when drinking water every day.

The pyramid shaped nylon tea bag designed by Peter Hewitt, the founder of Concord "tifft" bagged tea, in 2003 is also full of healing.

The tea bag is designed into the shape of a pyramid, which can stand stably in the tea cup. At the same time, a small tree bud is put into each tea bag, just as it is planted in tea. Every process of making tea seems to be watering a small tree bud and watching it grow slowly.

In addition to the comic sense, the product can also be cured.

For example, Trident's tooth shaped gum packaging. Every time you take out a gum, you lose one tooth. Finally, you gradually become a toothless grandfather. The whole process is full of fun.

Lifelike juice packaging, lovely cat bottle cap

Why is it rare in reality?

After watching so many wonderful designs, the biggest feeling is that in the food and beverage industry with fierce competition and serious packaging homogenization, packaging can also become the most direct advertising to attract consumers to make purchase decisions.

However, we find that many excellent conceptual designs are rare in real life.

The reason is that, on the one hand, it is difficult to find raw materials for bionic design. In order to be as realistic as possible, we need to constantly find materials very close to the texture of the body, but the texture of many organisms is difficult to simulate.

For example, Shenze Zhiren's bionic juice packaging is a classic case in industrial design. In the designer's concept, in addition to the similar color matching, it is also necessary to reflect the furry texture of kiwi fruit and the texture of banana.

However, due to the consideration of material search and production cost, in actual production, brands often can only choose ordinary materials for packaging, so it is difficult to imitate the texture of banana and kiwi fruit, resulting in a great reduction in the similarity of bionics.

On the other hand, the characteristics of commercial packaging are also one of the reasons to destroy the beauty of design. Due to the commercialization characteristics, product packaging often needs to be printed with a variety of logos. Complex logos will lead to the reduction of the grade of packaging at the aesthetic level, which is difficult to be consistent with the designer's concept.

Implementation difficulty, production cost and other factors will become obstacles to commercialization. However, the value of design is still worthy of attention.

So how to make good design bring commercial value into play?

Maybe we can find a simpler alternative to achieve the balance between cost and value - find common raw materials similar to the bionic ontology, and make them closer to the texture and shape of the ontology by changing the shape of the raw materials.

For example, Del Monte, an American food company, simplified the packaging of banana milk.

Instead of directly making the milk bottle into a banana, the merchant added a layer of mini banana peel wrapping paper outside the packaging bottle. It skilfully bypasses the technical difficulties. Compared with directly making the bottle into bananas, the difficulty and cost of printing the color of banana peel on the packaging paper are not only reduced a little.

Not only that, the merchant also designed the wrapping paper to be torn on all sides, just like peeling bananas, which is convenient and fun.

Iran's horn bottle can be well distinguished from the traditional round bottle cap, but it also encountered problems when landing, such as the matching relationship between horn height and carton. The project team invested a lot of energy and cost, simplified horn to the bottle cap, and finally made a more suitable scheme for landing.

Nature and life provide a way to find inspiration for packaging design, which can give people a sense of reasonable and unexpected surprise, so it is easy to hold the hearts of consumers.

In the process of design landing, we can open the brain hole from the direction of packaging methods and packaging materials, so as to maintain the sense of surprise, reduce the cost as much as possible and create the possibility of mass production.