The past 2 weeks I’ve been participating in a workshop Packaging Design, working with students from 2 different college majors. The objective was pretty straight-foward: choose an interesting product and make a more attractive package design for it. After some brainstorming we decided to go for trappist beer. By combining the complex and rich taste of a trappist beer with food, our package gave an added value to the product.
We wanted to tease the consumer, we wanted to create a minimalistic, classy package that didn’t lose it’s original authenticity. We chose not to mention which beer was in the package and rather hide little clues within it. Every package has it’s color, these are all colors that are found on the label of the trappist beer. There’s a small curve at the bottom of the package that indicate the complexity of that beer.
What followed was an in-depth research about the rich tastes and history behind every beer. Who made it? How does it taste? That last question could not be answered by simple one word. Tasting a trappist beer is an experience, for example a Chimay starts out bitter and has a sweet after-taste. How could we give all that information while still keeping things clean?
By putting all that shit in an awesome infographic, that’s how! 
Too bad something went wrong with printing. On the back of that infographic was a (working) QR-code which brought you to the site where you could participate in an online community. A place where you could like a beer, make a comment on it, browse through recepies compatible with trappist beer or take a test which beer fits you the most. By doing so, we gave the consumer a total social experience while enjoying this fine piece of brewmanship.
I could keep on writing about the material and why we chose to name our brand “Disix” but this post is getting big as it is. Bottomline is : it was awesome to come up with a product that for once wasn’t completely related to media. I had a great time working with these people and I’m really proud of the result!