'How to get away with… rules’

Design often faces the problem of having to conform to mandatory text requirement for product packaging. Various local regulatory demands significantly alter the design conceived for a specific product as a host of information must be placed on the front of its packaging.  This is the challenge we faced when working with “moo drink” and the Brazilian market. We tried to overcome this by actually reversing the function of ‘back’ and ‘front’ on our packaging.  We treated the back side as the one that clearly carries the product logo with no other visual noise. On the other side of the container we developed the 'MOO' logo vertically with flavor-indicative, subtle color-coded differentiations. All consumer related, mandatory information is included under it. With this design approach we suggest that the back and front of a packaging whole can be treated as interchangeable and of equal importance. 

Industrial design by Nikos Kastanakis. 

Our client Diego asked to be differentiated within a visually overloaded market and gave us a name which inspired our design approach: smör is the Swedish name for ‘butter’. We created a logo that transcribes the initial S to a visual reference to the rolling spires made by a knife on the butter surface. We created a special porcelain container that elegantly imitates a piece of butter and so completed the identification of all things butter with our client’s “smör”.

Industrial design by Nikos Kastanakis.