Shapes of things to come

Behind every basic household package is a design expert, reports ANGELA McCARTHY

Ever felt totally irritated by the plastic lid ring on drink bottles that always drops into your cup or glass, splashing your clean shirt?

What about the food pack with the tear seal along the dotted line that takes you 15 minutes to wrench apart - then splurts out over the bench?

Yet how often do we notice good packaging? If you're a product designer like Andrew Bissett of Formworks Product Design, you continually notice minute details - like whether containers stack easily.

Bissett loves the process of creating product shapes: "It's exciting to see what pushes people's buttons."

However, getting that new product into the supermarket takes time and energy. A recent revamp of an Anchor cream pot took 60 to 80 hours work, says Bissett.

Serious consideration must be given to factors consumers don't even consider. It may be that containers of different volumes need the same-sized lid, or the same base size so they stack easily.

Then there are issues such as whether a package sits properly, opens easily, and pours properly. Price also dictates. There is no point manufacturing something that costs $100 but needs to sell for $50.

Unitec Design School head Michael James says product design is an up-and-coming industry because of factors such as the increase of exports such as wines and dairy products, which need to be packaged to suit overseas markets.

Another is the increasing sophistication of New Zealand consumers who like flaunting their allegiances with designer carrier bags.

James also sees a greater trend towards use of recycled materials, rather than traditional materials like polystyrene.

"There is a trend in places like Japan for very expensive items to be in very simple packaging now."

Students are therefore becoming more informed about wastage and the need to recycle.

"It's a very layered discipline because you're looking at more than designing something," he says. "You're also looking at the sustainability of it."

Another balancing act is between engineering and aesthetics, says Bissett. Product designers have to come up with something distinctive for the client, while keeping within any manufacturing and production-line restraints.

It is this combination of engineering and design that initially attracted Bissett to product design.

As a school leaver and someone who loved art and pulling things apart, he checked out interior, graphic and industrial design and architecture before undertaking a three year industrial design diploma at Carrington Polytechnic (now a Unitec four-year degree). He loved it immediately.

"It is a fantastic feeling when all your abilities are challenged and fulfilled."

But it's a small industry. Formworks Product Design, one of the biggest privately-owned New Zealand product design consultancies, employs four full-time industrial designers.

Bissett says many industrial design graduates start in large companies such as Fisher & Paykel, "excellent breeding grounds for new designers because of the emphasis on manufacturing and industrial design."

He loves the variety of consultancy work, which includes anything from the Anchor pot to Coca-Cola retail dispensers, animal care equipment and McDonalds playgrounds.

Whatever the product, the process involved is the same, says Bissett. It requires research and concept development, computer modelling and engineering, prototype, production set-up and management and, finally, manufacturing.

Conceptual development - finding the form that meets the manufacturing criteria and client brief - can take from a third to half the time allocated.

"We usually generate numerous ideas from conservative to off-the-wall, then find somewhere in the middle where everyone is happy," says Bissett.

Formworks often works in conjunction with companies such as Dow Design, a boutique company specialising in brand design.

"In food packaging you're looking to create something unique among the clutter for your brand," says Dow Design director, Annie Dow.

A good package design involves many creative aspects. The challenge is to enhance brand values by developing an overall identity. "That means a great pack shape and graphics working together," says Dow.

Dow Design was responsible for the award-winning revamped images on the new Anchor bottle. Dow says most repositioning of brands and products in New Zealand is done through graphics, rather than pack innovations. This is because of volumes in New Zealand being small - it's not cost-effective for manufacturers to retool for new shapes.

How to become an industrial designer:-

* Industrial design is offered as a major within some design degrees such as those within Unitec, Massey University, Victoria University) and some technology and applied sciences degrees - like Otago University's applied science degree.

Industrial design includes the study of science and technical subjects, drawing, ergonomics, design, material technology and manufacturing processes. High-level computer skills are also important because 3-D solids and surfaces modelling software are essential design tools.