Black Widow Cider
Black Widow Cider is a fictitious alcohol company focused on creating sustainable packaging to reduce societies carbon footprint. Black Widow Cider is marketed towards individuals who enjoy a fruity beverage when out drinking and value the packaging of a product. This customer is an environmentally-conscious buyer and gravitates towards ethically sourced, locally grown, and recycled materials.
Project Overview
The purpose of this project was to consider the lifecycle of design. Not only was the product supposed to be sustainable, it had to reflect a deeper understanding of ethically-sourced design. Considering things like materials used and how they can benefit the product, or the manufacturing of the product on a bigger scale. Ultimately the design should work to benefit the greater good. When creating the product, considering the target audience was also a key step. Addressing issues like ‘who is going to buy this product?’ or ‘how will it reach the desired customer?’ The final execution of this project included a size-as physical rendering mimicking the intended design
Software Used
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Adobe Photoshop
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Adobe Illustrator
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Adobe Indesign
Deliverables
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Physical mockup of product
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Professional product shots
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Magazine ad
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Social media posts
Label Design
Objectives
Create a sustainable packaging solution for a current packaging method. Design a series of products that utilize the sustainable design while maintaining consistent branding throughout.
Personal Goals
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Create a product I would use
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Properly research a unique sustainable design (uncommon solution)
Professional Goals
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Design industry-level mockups
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Document development process
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Obtain supportive research
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Consistent branding through deliverables
Process
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I had a vague idea of the direction I wanted to go in. I started off by putting all of my concept ideas in a mindmap, then quickly switched to visually sketching everything out. decide the companies name and product.
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I went the name Black Widow because I wanted their to be some reference to a female-owned business, and at the time this project was created Halloween had just past.
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I'm a huge fan of fall and one drink that's really big durning the season is Cider. The original name of the product was 'Black Widow Brewery', but brewery seemed too reminiscent of a physical location instead of the drink itself.
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Sticking with the halloween theme I selected the creepy typeface of Folk OT for the logo. The submark was designed to resemble the black widow's marking.
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The bottle mockups were created using a paper mache technique. Recycled bottles were covered with a beige texture paper
Mock-up
Front of bottle
Print Ad
Problem
'How to make an alcohol bottle/can sustainably.'
Solution
Recycled wood fibre bottles. The inspiration for this material came from a beer that Carlsberg called their “green fibre bottle.” They currently are on a journey to create the first 100% recyclable bottle created using sustainably sourced wood. After I found this article I thought I had found my answer, however something dawned on me; how is wood going to hold in liquid?
The Carlsberg bottles seem to be made out of a cardboard texture, but if it was entirely wood fibre the material would slowly break down after sitting for a few minutes. After further research, it seemed that the bottles weren’t entirely wood but contained a thin seal to allow for the beer to remain in the bottles. Most of these seals are made of polymer, which was a massive let down.
Polymer is a compound used in alot of existing packaging designs that doesn’t break down easily. This makes it so products that use it can’t fully be recycled or biodegradable. However, there is lots of research being done to create polymers out of entirely bio-based materials, lessening the carbon foot and making it so the bottles CAN break down overtime. Thus, my sustainable bottle solution.
Final Takeaways
The actual concept of sustainable design is easily confused with something that is just ‘environmentally conscious’. Something that’s sustainable is something that makes an impactful difference instead of just being ‘better’ than other harmful products. This concept was the hardest thing to overcome for this assignment. When associating words the terms ‘sustainable’ and ‘eco friendly’ seem interchangeable, but finding the research to actually create a sustainable product is a challenge. The other hardship is the cost of actually producing a sustainable product is significantly higher than just using plastic. After spending the time to look into different sustainable companies, it’s evident that the level of passion that goes into designing them is heightened. Someone has to actual care about an issue to find a solution to it, and for that I respect the world of sustainable design even more.