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This project is the packaging for Sweets You Can Eat. The product is a do-it-yourself baking kit for vegan and gluten-free baking recipes. The package has everything you need to make the baked goods. It includes the bake mixes, liquid ingredients, a recipe/description card, and a catalog to choose your next month's bake.
Vegan and gluten-free bakes often require a lot of obscure ingredients to replace basic ingredients like flour. Because of this, having an all-in-one, pre-measured kit is extremely useful, as you don't need to buy a bunch of ingredients that you will never use again.
The goal was to make a box design that is cheap to produce, easily transportable, an enjoyable experience to open, mostly recyclable, and has an all-natural, green, and vegan feel.
Catalog
The first step was deciding how to ship the products. I chose a flatter cardboard box because it was cheap, recyclable, and easy to transport. I then decided to make a tab lock roll-end style box because it felt fancier, more enjoyable to open, and held the products in well.
After that, I made a mood board of all the items I needed in the box and found the style of container those items would be in. Once I knew what would go in the box, I created a quick layered sketch showing how the items would be arranged within it.
For the final part of this step, I ordered all the necessary items and measured them to ensure I had the correct dimensions to hold them in place in the box.
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I then needed to find something online that used the type of box I wanted to use. I ordered the box and then used it as a base to make iterations on.
After ensuring the box folding design was not proprietary, I unfolded the box to examine its construction and then reverse-engineered it. After recreating the box in Illustrator, I changed all the dimensions to fit my needs and the previous measurements of the items in the box. I created cut lines, bleed lines, and fold lines. I also used the measurements of my liquid items to create a cardboard form to hold them in place in the box.
I then needed to acquire high-quality, flat cardboard that was large enough to fit my dimensions. Sadly, the size I needed was slightly outside the regular consumer size of flat cardboard. This meant that I needed to buy from commercial sources, which required dozens of phone calls and hours of research to find a supplier that didn't require a truck loading dock.
After obtaining the cardboard, I laser-cut it and folded it along the fold lines. It took multiple attempts, involving slight resizing of the box and re-laser cutting, before I achieved a final product that I liked.
The next step was to add color. Since I was working with cardboard, my best option was to use dye sublimation.
I first created the design I wanted to print on the cardboard. I then created multiple swatch tests to determine the correct CMYK code, pressure, heat, and paper type to achieve the desired colors. This took around 10 different color tests. The challenge was that to print on dark colors, such as cardboard, you need highly saturated colors. The best way to achieve highly saturated colors is to apply a lot of pressure; however, excessive pressure flattens the cardboard and compromises its structural integrity. After conducting numerous tests, I discovered the correct formula to achieve the desired results. Unfortunately, the paper I needed was only available in small 8.5x11-inch sheets. This was fine for the prototype, but it meant that I had to print out 15 pages, carefully lay them out, and heat press them one at a time.
I then put everything together and designed and printed the stickers for the bake mixes.
After finishing the box, I needed to present it. For this, I created a mockup of the 6-foot by 6-foot board on which I would present. I then printed out three banners that would go across the backboard. I also created multiple catalogs to hand out. Finally, I hung up all the banners and set everything up to display in front of them.
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