Award-winning condom packaging in Japan
I ran into my friend Daniel at a cafe today. Daniel is a designer from Belgium who works for a really good design firm here in Osaka. His company recently won an award for a package design they did for a condom manufacturer in Japan. So I went to his office to learn about the brief and their design process, etc. Actually, the brief was not too much beyond change the package to sell more condoms. But what they did was very interesting and creative.
Most importantly they did research to find out who their market really was. It turned out it was not young men, but young women. They had been targeting the wrong market. So they found the market is young women, but this market was not all about cuteness as you may think, at least not in the stereotype Hello-Kitty style. It was a bit more "fashionable" than that. The new designs above are so very different than the old designs that lacked a concept and were very drab, boring, and "mediciney." The old design was quite symmetrical, usual, and dull. Well, long story short: the condom manufacturer has seen sales more than double since the new packaging. Advertising had not changed, the package was all that changed and it has had a big impact. It's been a huge success.
Note the asymmetrical design, white space and how the implied lines of the red butterflies lead the eye to the center brand name -- this is where they want the eye to go. "dot" means this kind is ribbed. So, the package brings you in...
...but once you have it in your hand then you can turn it over to get all the details as needed. Simplification is also about moving things away, such as removing info (which becomes clutter) from the front and moving it to the back
Sorry about the poor quality photos. The iPhone was all I had and this meeting was spontaneous.
