Furman places in top 10 in design challenge

Two simple pleasures that can be found in many homes – plants and wine – inspired a team of five Master of Arts in Strategic Design students in 48HR REPACK, a student packaging design competition. Hosted by the Institute of Packaging Professionals Southeast Chapter, the annual competition challenges 45 collegiate teams from across the country to design sustainable consumer products with more environmentally friendly material usage and in a way that gives a secondary use to products to help reduce waste.

The catch: They have just 48 hours to do it.

The “Herbalist” design

The Dintastic Designers, made up of Fiona Newell, Anne Heaton Sanders ’22, Elizabeth Hendrix ’22, Simran Goel and Michael Kline, conceptualized a boxed wine that when empty, becomes an herb planter. They named the brand “Herbalist.” Using 100% compostable materials, the box holds up to four bottles of wine and comes with seed starter for a variety of herbs. Once the wine is gone, the box is reconfigured along perforated lines into a planter, and the same plastic liner for the wine is reused to hold soil, seeds and water to sprout the herbs. The plastic spout also can be mailed back to receive loyalty points towards a free etched wine glass.

“We thought boxed wine was something different and a product people would pay attention to,” said Newell. “Wine and herbs also are a great pairing since they’re both used in cooking.”

The “Herbalist” design placed in the top 10, competing schools, such as Michigan State University, Virginia Tech, Clemson, University of Florida.

The Master of Arts in Strategic Design program gives students an advanced understanding of design, business and communication theory, preparing them for creative careers in design, marketing, art direction, copywriting and branding. The team combined their unique skills in graphic design, packaging, branding and video editing to build “Herbalist” and create a promotional video for it.

“I felt like our students took the creative route with their video,” said Marta Lanier, director of the Master of Arts in Strategic Design program. “The video explains what their product and packaging do, but in a way that incorporates a lot of what they’ve learned about storytelling, film and branding. It shows how our students can not only make unique packaging, but they can also put together creative and exciting branding and marketing to tell the product’s story.”

Goel said she felt prepared for the competition, thanks to Furman’s strategic design program.

“Before the program, I would’ve never used a mood board or understood the process of the first phase to the last phase of designing a product,” Goel said. “We used a mood board as our starting point and structure for how we did everything else – what design elements we chose, the colors, our sketches and our logo.”

Building the “Herbalist” mood board took much of Friday night, the first night of the competition that was Feb. 3-5. The students then pulled an all-nighter on Saturday and into Sunday to design, build and film their product.

Competitions like 48HR REPACK are great experiences for students before they enter the workforce, said Lanier. Students have to work through creative briefs, ensuring they are meeting all the client’s needs – just as they would in the real world – and do so on a very quick timeline. Team competitions also challenge students’ ability to work together, communicate and ultimately agree on the same vision.

“Someone had to delegate; someone had to lead,” said Lanier. “It was great watching the students and their team work.”

Competitions also expose students to industry professionals. Lanier connected the “Herbalist” team with professional designers who gave feedback during the competition, and the students were exposed to designers at The Coca-Cola Company, Plastixx FFS Technologies and WestRock, the companies that provided the creative briefs of the competition. “Herbalist” can be viewed here.