How do you make a cardboard box interesting?
With shipping costs, assembly time, and hundreds of products to consider, the challenge was finding a solution that felt special without becoming unnecessarily complicated.
The goal was this: create a packaging system that could accommodate different combinations of gloves, paperwork, and promotional materials while standing out from competing samples.
My Role
As Principal Designer, I led the packaging design process from initial research and concept development through prototyping and production.
Working with Sales Leadership, the Sample Room team, and external vendors, I explored packaging materials, tested different configurations, and developed the final visual designs.
As part of the company's brand refresh, I was tasked with exploring what that might look like. I started by meeting with the Sample Room team to understand their process, then looked at how other companies approached sample packaging and unboxing experiences.
The tricky part was that, unlike a box of perfume or cosmetics, our products came in hundreds of different shapes, sizes, and combinations. Whatever we designed needed to accommodate that variety without making the process unnecessarily expensive or complicated.
Early Ideas
Admittedly, I have a soft spot for packaging design, so there were plenty of ambitious ideas floating around early on. Custom die-cut inserts, beautiful little tabs and folds, specifically arranged products (all the sorts of things you might imagine in an unboxing experience). I wanted something that felt like an occasion.
Reality, of course, had other plans.
Working with a few repurposed pizza boxes (and eventually with some actual standard shipping boxes), I explored different ways to organize the gloves and supporting materials.
One of the first concepts used branded exterior labels and products tucked underneath printed materials wrapped up in tissue-paper.
Proof of Concept
We ran a small batch to see how it held up in practice. The presentation was well received, but assembly was another story. Applying labels neatly and wrapping irregularly shaped gloves took more time than anticipated. It also didn't quite achieve the visual impact we were hoping for.
Still, the test helped clarify what we actually needed: a few different box sizes, a better way to organize the paperwork, and a solution that didn't require quite so much fuss.
Paint it...Orange
The orange boxes were hard to miss. The different sizes helped accommodate varying product combinations without needing elaborate inserts or wrapping.
A folder was devised to hold the sell sheets, business card, promotional materials, and, importantly, the maple candy—which had apparently become a non-negotiable part of the experience.
There's humour in the solution being considerably simpler than some of my original ideas. However I believe it was just as important to understand what the limitations were before limiting ourselves to three bright orange boxes and a custom folder to keep everything organized.
