Responsive Collaborative - First meet up

Research 

On our first meet up session, we thought that before we started doing anything else that it was important to see first hand what's already out there. We particularly wanted to look at how shops display their products, in terms of shelf space and size of the packaging and what type of packaging is most popular. As well as looking at current Saucy Fish packaging, we wanted to look at other market own brand fish, to see if there was much difference. With all this in mind, we headed to the supermarkets in town.

We managed to take a lot of pictures before the lady in Morrisons told us that we weren't allowed to, so luckily we had enough research by then. We saw that most of the packaging uses black - a colour that makes the product feel premium and luxurious. This is definitely something that we should consider when designing the packaging, although Saucy Fish already uses black packaging, so maybe  we want to think of something completely new instead of regurgitated.  We also noticed that most, if not all, packaging uses a cardboard sleeve - we want to avoid this as we want to pop out off the shelf instead of fade into the crowd. They all use plastic too, which is something that we would want to avoid seeing as the brief highlights the use of economic materials. 

We then decided to go to the library to see other packaging styles and ideas, as we had never made packaging before so still a little clueless to the concept. We wanted to see how it's changed through the years and if we could take some ideas for our own packaging. Particularly looking for something imaginative and different. We found the New Packaging Design book the most useful, as it has a lot of clean cut and smart looking packaging which I think is what the Saucy Fish Co is looking for, as theirs is already like that.  I think this is the kind of aesthetic that we wanted to go down, using minimal colours and good type. But, we need to remember that it isn't the design we're really changing its the packaging itself!!!



After looking at so many different types of packaging, we felt a bit muddled and thought we should take a step back. To help think of what we need to do, we did a game that the graphic designers learnt in one of their sessions. You make up a possible client/buyer, saying what their life is like and what they need from the product. I found this quite helpful, as it made me think about the most important things that we need to do for the packaging - quick, easy, looks good and can't be touched!!! This made us think about what we still need to look at - materials.