More to our Saved Campaign is the story behind the packaging. We love spotting brilliant packaging ideas and it was important for us for Saved to reflect the purpose of the campaign which is rescuing things from waste. We were very lucky to have Daniel Weil, a partner at Pentagram, design our Saved packaging. We caught up with him for some tea not so long ago so he could share more of the Saved story with us.
KH: Why did you chose this material?
DW: It was important that the Saved packaging matched the expectation of saving things – and the bigger objective. The cardboard material used was salvaged from Grace Martin printers, who generously gave us their run offs. When a printer is changing the work being printed, hundred of papers are needed to put through a machine to clean it between jobs. These pieces of run off paper get discarded once on side of the page is completely saturated with colour.
KH: Talk me through the design.
DW: The design of the packaging is simple. No adhesive is needed. The interlocked band means it can be used multiple times. The beauty in this is the crisp new white side of the paper as the outside so when people open their Saved shirt they are pleasantly surprised by the inside. This theme is also present in whole idea of Saved, and that is look beyond what is outside. The width and height of the packaging was specifically chosen to comply with a size prescribed by the post office. If it is of a certain size, then the package can be posted as a letter rather than a parcel.
When a Saved T is put in the packaging, it’s put in a small clear bag. This is to negate the need to have waterproof packaging. These bags came from a retail packaging supplier near Spitalfields market. This particular supplier used to be the main supplier to almost all off the green grocers. Over time as green grocers started fading away, so did the supplier. It was a 3rd generation owned old shop. So we helped ‘Save’ the shop in a way as they had a lot of stock but little business.
KH: Did you find it restrictive the idea of coming up with packaging for a purpose?
DW: I understood that there would be restrictions but saw these as opportunities to make something appropriate and life enhancing. To make something with a purpose is adding a new sense of value, one which is around perception and cultural things rather than material. To have value things don’t need to be expensive, it’s more about an enhanced experience. The packaging gives the message that you can be good and look good.
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If you’d like to see our Saved packaging in the flesh why not order a T.
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
