OUAN503 - UCC Coffee, Packaging Research

I feel like packaging is something that I am constantly exposed to at nearly every moment throughout an average day in some form or another. But when I was thinking about it in the early stages of the UCC Coffee brief I realised that I'm very unfamiliar with what kinds of packaging designs there are out there, and when it comes to coffee I haven't ever properly taken the time to look at the packaging and take in how it's made. So this for me was a crucial starting point in the design process for producing a piece of packaging. Using google and image sites such as Pinterest I was able to collect a huge range of different examples of coffee packaging to study and use as reference and inspiration for my own packaging designs. I was actually surprised at the variety that there was when look specifically at coffee packaging; the materials used to make it, the various colour schemes and differences in aesthetic choices, even the different shapes of boxes or bags and the different ways the packaging is fastened or sealed.

When it comes to materials I was reintroduced to many different choices that are available when it comes to creating the packaging. It came across like a limitless number of combinations of different packaging techniques. The outer packaging of a product doesn't even have to accommodating to the shape of the contents and ultimately can simply act as a purely aesthetic piece to support the product inside. I liked the packaging that was a box shape of varying dimensions from a cube to a cuboid and of varying heights that simply contained a bag of coffee inside. Keeping the packaging like this means that the product as a whole can be easily stored by consumers and looks neat and attractive on a shelf or countertop for example. Furthermore, it's easy to make. Box packaging is some of the simplest there is, and it would be easy to take a net of a box and print the design onto it before folding it up and presenting the product in this way. I've also seen this technique used with other types of outer packaging, where it's cylindrical shape as oppose to a box and this also has the same qualities in that it's neat, easy to store, and essentially an elegant way to present a product. Another type of packaging I saw over and over again, and really liked was the use of a bag to contain the coffee. This came in several forms, some wrapped up like a package, but others sealed at the top leaving a hand for it to be picked up by. There were also some of these types of packaging where the top was sealed but then folded over a few times, I suppose it can also be rolled down to the level of the coffee in the bag. This is what I liked most about this kind of packaging, it's very versatile and can be compacted for easy storage. Even more so it's a lot more open to being handled how a customer wants rather than if it was in a box for example, it stays as a box until the coffee is gone. When I was thinking about sustainability and the emphasis that the 'Grand Cafe' brand has towards the environment I thought about making packaging out of a type of brown paper to highlight this. I managed to find some examples of coffee packaging that is exactly like this and very similar to the other forms of packaging I discovered only made out of brown paper. I thought this was a good starting point for looking at a select area of coffee packaging that suited what I was trying to do in communicating their brands message and presenting their ethos as best I could. I narrowed it down to around three types of packaging that really stood out to me in terms of their shape and presentation. They had the rustic feel due to the colouring of the paper that I was looking for and I think would work well with the type face I created. On top of this, the simplistic branding that had been printed onto the packaging had a very elegant feel and didn't make it feel over crowded. It had the counter top feel that the brief was looking for and I finally had a direction with the packaging design that I wanted to pursue. The next problem was looking into how to make this type of packaging using paper and how to fold it accordingly. This was going to be challenging as not only do I have inexperience with branding, but I've never looked into creating packaging like this before.