[06. Informative
It is the packaging that guarantees the best information, the useful and necessary one.
Informative is the packaging containing, in compliance with the law, all the information useful regarging the content and its packaging, their use and disposal.
The Story of Everdaily: information as an interface for consumption
Packaging is now recognized as one of the key elements of the brand’s communication system: it strengthens the identity of the product, it ensures its recognition in the shop and it stands out in the shelf through adequate differentiation from the competition, it enhances its quality and benefits in order to guide purchasing preferences. However, among the communicative functions of packaging that have acquired increasing importance over time, the informative dimension is certainly the one that has seen an increasing interest and concern in recent years among the public opinion, the companies and istitution.
Beyond merely seductive aspects, packaging is in fact what allows people to make informed choices and satisfy their needs and requirements. The information not only allows to understand the product, but also enables its consumption, favoring interaction (opening, handling, dosage, and so on) with both the container and the contents. Expiry date, ingredients, nutritional profile, warnings, instructions for use, environmental indications, etc. these are just some of the contents conveyed by the product label. Contents that have transformed the container into a real “interface” for purchase and consumption, accentuating its role as a “facilitator” at the people service.
It is in this perspective that the New Zealand startup Everdaily has adopted a line of packaging that places information and instructions for use at the center of product communication and brand identity, with the aim of offering a refillable multipurpose detergent and thus minimize the impacts of house cleaning.
With the aim of simplifying cleaning operations and reducing packaging waste at the same time, instead of multiple separate detergents for each room in the house, Everdaily offers a single concentrated product (The Everdaily Concentrate) that is diluted in bottles reusable sprays with the addition of water. Depending on the dilution ratio, the product can then be used for a specific cleaning need (floors, glass, laundry, dishes, etc.). And, to close the circle, the formulation of the product is based on a non-toxic formula, with natural ingredients of vegetable and mineral origin, and does not contain aggressive chemicals.
The development of the packaging line, by the Marx Design studio, was based on the need to make the product and its use easily understandable, with also the aim of generating awareness and favoring a change in consumer behavior with respect to the category of cleaning detergents. Given the New Zealand public unfamiliarity with concentrated products, it was in fact necessary to overcome some resistance of people to purchase this type of product, clearly explain its use and at the same time mark a break with traditional household cleaners.
To enhance the information dimension of the packaging, Marx Design decided to build the identity of the product around the dilution ratios which, in addition to constituting a characteristic and differentiating aspect of the Everdaily system, are essentially the guide for using this multipurpose detergent.
The entire project, from the structure of the bottle to the configuration of the label, both on the front and on the back, is based on a principle of practical simplicity which, combined with graphic choices, aimed at essentiality enhance the information function of the packaging, with the goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the contents communicated, from the composition to the instructions for the product use. From the visual identity point of view, the graphic configuration of the packaging is inspired by the functionalist design of the 50s and 60s, and in particular by the principles of “good design”, written in the 70s by Dieter Rams, one of the main exponents of the Gute Form (from the German: “good form”) in Germany.
Dieter Rams, born in Wiesbaden in 1932, is one of the most important and influential figures of 20th century Industrial Design. In 1955 he was hired by Braun and in 1961 he became director of their design department, a role he held until 1995. During the 40 years he worked for the German company, Rams designed hundreds of objects that are still considered as design icons, elegant and extraordinarily minimal, and at the same time incredibly easy to use and immediate. According to the Rams Decalogue, “good design” must be: innovative (as a “formal translation” of technological innovation), useful, aesthetic (beautiful, harmonious), understandable, discreet (sober and not “noisy”), honest, durable, precise (accurate in every detail), simple (essential), respectful of the environment.
Although drawn up in the past century, the principles of “good design” actually represent a challenge for the present, but above all for the future, considering how, in the current scenario of consumption, home care products, and more generally consumer goods still have strong communication problems: visual pollution, semantic saturation, homologation, which correspond to a poor quality of information and an inability to address different groups of recipients.
The criticalities described above are now so evident that it is necessary to rethink the logic behind the packaging project, reaffirming on one hand the ethical responsibilities of all the players who are part of the packaging system; on the other hand, once again questioning which communicative contents are made usable, for what purposes and with which expressive methods the transfer is carried out.
