Initial Idea

I began concentrating on the user experience of my packaging. Creating a containing that stimulating a number of sensory organs so it would become a memorable collectable and great piece of design. I wanted to use my work to change people's perception of certain subjects. Near the beginning of my project I was caught in a strut about wanting to change people's prejudice towards others, ie. stereotyping. Although it soon became apparently that trying to change something that was already so integrated within our community would be an almost impossible job.

After many tutorials I started to steer away from the idea of stereotypes and thought more about looking into people's fears. I wanted to encourage people to face their fears and try to overcome them. I would make a box which would challenge the users to see, touch, hear their fear, thus making them feel more immune to it. Here's an initial mock-up I did of my new idea:

The Concept:

I want to challenge people’s perception of fears and possibly change how or what emotions they associate with them. I will do this by creating conceptual packaging. The idea is that the packaging will not only act as a general container for something but also aim to evoke a certain emotion from the user. Parts of the packaging will be laser cut hopefully, allowing the user to have a peek at what’s inside before a surprising reveal. This will allow a number of viewing angles which in turn gives me the opportunity to have control of what the user sees and the variety of different images they view; thus potentially evoking a number of different emotions at the same time.

Example:

Container labelled ‘the fear of heights’ will include some serious and humorous imagery showing there are a number of different ways to view this phrase. For the serious imagery, the viewer will be forced to face their fear, as for the humorous images they will be taught to see the brighter side of their fear, which will hopefully make them feel more at ease about it.

Container labelled ‘the fear of monsters in your wardrobe’ will be designed in a way so that the user has to open a door before peeping through the window to see the imagery. The interaction of having to open the door is in itself an act of facing your fear already and the imagery behind each door will be a humorous take of the fear.