Mushy Peas- Final Critique

After last weeks crit where my idea for the mushy pea packaging did not go down as well as I had hoped I went back to the drawing board, developing some new ideas as well as trying to improve the existing one. Eventually I narrowed down the choice to 2 ideas, one of which was new and one which was the old one with some modifications made. After getting some feedback from friends on the course about which they thought worked best, the first idea with changes seemed to go down better as people liked its striking leaf pattern and felt it would really stand out on the shelf.

I thought about whether this was important for my target market for the product to be striking and stand out as I found out from my research that Waitrose's own brand is particularly strong and trusted by its shoppers and by differentiating my brand too much it may provoke the customer to reject it. However when I walked around the winton store I found loads of examples of really unique, individual packaging which was striking and visually interesting so it can't be a bad strategy to stand out. . One particular example was this chewing gum which alongside wrigley's, trebor and orbit, who all conform to the same aesthetic code, just stands completely apart and made me want to pick it up and investigate it.



Furthermore my product would not be a standard dip (it is a new product which could be a dip or side) and to have it blend in with other things on the shelf like houmous, guacamole and salsa would perhaps make more apparent the fact it is not a traditional dip and people may therefore find it strange that it has been thrust amongst these.

So seeing how effective standing out against the products around you can be I decided to go with the striking idea. I thinned the border like Neil recommended and added a die cut so that the silhouette of the product would be the shape of the leaf pattern, not a standard square box. I took this idea into my Thursday tutorial, where the general consensus was still that it lacked dynamism and needed another element. I knew I had the final crit the next day so it was really a choice between trying to complete the designs as they were or going back to the drawing board to think of a way of enhancing my packaging and probably not having the final product for the critique. Although the crits are beneficial, I would rather have a decent final piece to hand in and put in my portfolio than have a less developed piece for the crit for people to comment on so I opted to try and improve it.

I found a way of doing this by adding a 3d element to the packaging where the logo is set back behind the leaf pattern. This meant that the net was alot bigger and more complicated to produce but emphasises the garden feel more as the logo is set back in a way that makes it look like a sign amongst overgrown leaves (which I think alludes to the product being almost hidden which has the effect of making it seem more exclusive).

This went down pretty well in the crit, everyone seemed to agree it was an improvement. However the tutors questioned whether the packaging was excessive in terms of materials and cost as the net is 124mm x 597mm and there would be some die cutting and assembly involved which would obviously cost more than a simple rectangular outer. They also questioned the size of the pot I used to develop my outer around which In hindsight, I can now see is too big, I assumed mushy peas came in a standard 400g tin which they don't, it is actually 300g. Therefore I will downsize my net to fit a 300g pot and reduce the costs this way which is incredibly annoying as I spent a bloody long time designing the current net through trial and error until I perfected the design but it has to be done and adapting it to a new size shouldn't be too difficult.