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Book Journals My Shrinking Waistline

To lose weight you must decrease caloric intake and increase physical activity. Simple equation but damn hard to follow. Motivation is the all important and invisible variable and very few products on the market address it. Workbook 001, the Food & Fitness Diary flip book logs 26 weeks of nutrition and exercise. Following every two weeks you measure yourself and by the end of the year, even Kate Moss will envy you. Don’t believe me? Just flip thru the book and watch that shrinking waistline.

Designer: New Text Studio

Coffee On A Stick

Allow me to introduce you to the most revolutionary way of making coffee….directly from a stick! The Cappuccino Coffee Stick is a spoon laden with your favorite coffee-fix that dissolves deliciously into a steaming cup of water. Tear away the plastic wrap, dip the instant spoon and a few good swirls later; a piping hot cup of coffee is ready for your consideration. The need for “your type of coffee” can only be understood by an addict, I’m one and for me this design wins full brownie points. Now only if Nescafe Select were available on this spoon!

Designer: Heo Jeong Im

On The Death Of A Teabag

I have this friend who keeps collecting all her used teabags to add to her henna mixture (hair dye) and it always grosses me out. Different strokes for different folks, what do you do with your dead-used teabag? Mine goes straight into the bin, haha I’m lying, I use loose tea leaves! But seriously, would you want to create artwork with a dripping bag like seen in the “Teabag Coasters” packaging or would you just dump it?

Designers: Yuree S. Lim & Jieun Yang

The Last Straw

Boo to you, you-land-polluting-extra-plastic STRAW! We don’t need you!

Not a great slogan for the green-brigade, but most definitely do-able. Ditch the straw and have the drinks-packs include an “Internal Straw”. A neatly folded layer of the box itself becomes the pipe to sip your drinks from. Simple, easy and GOOD!

Designer: Kyung-soo Park

No Shelf For My Shampoo!

Less Soft may not be the apt name for a liquid soap /shampoo packaging, but the purpose behind the re-design is apt! The idea is to use a packaging that is eco-friendly and can adopt variations in skin, so that it becomes easy to distinguish between soap and shampoo when we are all lathered up! The material used to make the bottle is “self-resolved corn starch vinyl”, and has suction cups to stick the bottle to the wall. I dig the fish-shape the bottle takes,which is prominent when hung.

Designer: Jung Hyun Jee

No More Tape And Scissors!

Many may not be aware but our ed-in-chief Long Tran is in the process of building up his fashion line for men, and I helped him out a bit by getting some T-shirts dyed here in India. While I received his package in good shape, sending the Tees back in this big brown box was a nightmarish story! Triple rounds of duct tape and many snips later, the box still looked a bit insecure to me. Concepts like “No More Tape And Scissors” can come in handy for folks like me, who don’t ship goods on a regular basis and find professionals too expensive.

Designer: Jaesik Heo

UPACKS, Fold It, Tape It, Ship It

It seems a box is always too big or small so designer Patrick Sung came up with flat sheets of recyclable corrugated cardboard called the Universal Packaging System or UPACKS. The patterns make it easy to fold and conform to almost any shape while maintaining structural rigidity and protecting the contents. Love the idea of saving on packaging but will this actually work? I suspect each sheet would have to be sufficiently padded; not too thick, not too thin, but just right said Goldilocks.

Designer: Patrick Sung

I’ll Cup Noodles To That

Oh Cup Noodle, you fed me all thru college when I was broker than a joke. You flavored my palette with harmonies of sweet and saltiness. How I enjoyed the gummy texture of your noodles and fondly remember burning my tongue several times because I couldn’t wait for you to cook and cool. Sadly Cup Noodle, your styrofoam packaging is a big no-no so I want to show you this one; collapsable, disposable, and much easier to ship.

Designers: Joonggeun Ahn , Jeongmi Lee, Hyunseok Moon & Donghee Suh

Spooning The Yogurt

Most often yogurt cups come with extra plastic spoons, which for the moment may seem handy, but are they really? Aww come on; get your eco-green-caps on! We need to re-think, for that matter Cho Hye-seung has already done that bit, and come up with the Yogurt Spoon Package Design. The top seal of the cup comes off and can be folded into the shape of a functional spoon. Now be honest, how many of you actually lick the yogurt stuck to the seal paper…isn’t this a more legit way of doing that?

Designer: Cho Hye-seung

Tang, Tea And More, On The Go

Cumulus Bottle concept is simple, it’s a plain reusable bottle with a juice concentrate dispenser located in the cap. Pop in the juice cartridge into its compartment, fill in the water and you’re set. At the push of a button, the drink concentrate (or granules) dispense into the water and mix into a refreshing drink. Most often we discard the used juice/soda bottles, but with the Cumulus, we eliminate that action and re-use it time and again for flavored drinks on the go. Eco-consumers at their best!

Designer: Kisun Kim

Tea Calendar

Calendar Teabags are basically a box of teabags with a variety of teas packaged as the dates of that month. A novel idea for tea buffs and those who appreciate niche products. You can pique interest by packing a mix of tea flavors from around the world, more like a collectible edition. Have Earl Grey one day and Darjeeling Oolongs the other!

Designer: Cho Hee Ha

Google Envelopes, Beta Of Course

Designers Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik from the Industrial Design program at Syracuse University came up with this concept called Google Envelopes. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to map the course of mail and how it can tell a story? They came up with Google Envelopes, which can be sent through G-Mail itself. It’s only a concept, but totally viable and something people can immediately understand.

Designers: Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik

Gum Disposal Done Right

If you get chewing gum stuck to something precious (clothes, shoes, hair etc.) then rub some ice to harden it and then scrape it off. The point is, you got chewing gum stuck to you because an irresponsible nutcase probably owns a bottle of chewing gum and had no handy paper around for proper disposal. The ingenious “Green Seeds” chewing gum bottle design addresses this issue and features a perforated paper-tape dispenser at the bottom of the bottle plus a temporary storage space for used gums.

Designer: Gonglue Jiang