Peluche Café Plushie Box Design
This project is part of a branding book assignment for a fictional company. The company is a cafe with a gift shop that primarily sells stuffed animals and originates from a Mexican-American family inspired to start this business. This item, in particular, is a box customers would receive with the purchase of a stuffed animal. It comes with a voucher that allows customers to exchange a tag attached to their package for a free drink at the café. This box serves as a promotion and a thank you for supporting the business.
PROJECT GOAL
The goal of this project was to come up with a creative packaging design that visitors would find intriguing while also promoting the cafe part of the business. To do this, I used the branding created for the company: the “Peluche” logo, a bear motif, patterns, and color blocking. I successfully implemented branding elements without overwhelming the design with the use of patterns. Yet, I found filling in the other sides of the box was challenging, aside from including the logo. To solve this, I came up with a panel explaining the origin of the business and another panel with washing and care instructions for the plushie. A last panel allows the customer to write their plushie name and owner’s name as a customization aspect.
PROJECT EXPERIENCE
Coming up with this packaging design was challenging at the time since I had not designed many packaging items beforehand. Additionally, it was difficult to think of a box that would not entirely mimic existing ones, such as the Build-a-Bear Workshop box. However, after drawing and researching different package design options, I was excited to finally find one that would best suit my fictional company’s branding. To make the box a little more unique, I included a twist on the traditional handles used for these packages. Ideally, the shape of the handle would be the shape of the bear motif from the logo and include a token tag for one free drink at the cafe.
PROJECT OUTCOME
Overall, I think that this packaging project is one of my favorite pieces and one that I am most proud of, mainly because it was something that I had not done previously at time of creation. It exceeded my expectations since I initially thought I would pass on the idea after sketching it because of how complex the box design was, but I’m glad that I kept working on it until the end.