Swide Magazine by Dolce&Gabbana

As much as we should know better we are guilty of buying loo roll for the cute puppy on the front or cereals based on the cartoon character's likability. Time to grow up? A few Canadian design students' take on the matter might well help up do just that.

Sylvain Allard teaches design at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and had the highly inspired idea to create a blog to showcase the works of his Packaging Design students. Browsing through them is an entertaining experience with such timeless creations as the "Cereales Killer" breakfast cereals, but the purpose isn't mere comedy.

The key word here is sustainabilty. Sustainable packaging is what Allard and his students are advocating, and there is more to it than dull brown recycled paper. The various creations are as many challenges to our conceptions to what sustainable means and the individual apple box, recycled carboard as it might be, is an example of everything that is wrong with our current approach. Yes so it might be fun and cute and oh so original (a cut-out apple on an apple box; how do they come up with these things!) but mostly an insult to those working on an alternative. Without starting to rant on the tons and tons of domestic waste we produce as supposedly informed communities, people who should know better, well we're pretty much all guilty as charged.

But then who said sustainability had to take itself seriously?

There is the udder-shaped soya milk bottle for instance, and of course the classic alphabet tofu. Its mastermind even wrote it a pretty emotional letter: "Dear Tofu, Words fail me to tell you how boring you were and that I never thought of you when I was cooking. But now that you have letters to answer me, I feel the dawn of a relationship and already I find you are more friendly."

Now where are the letters to spell "yuck" and "well done"?

 

Source and credits: Packaging Design @ UQAM

 

TAGS: food packaging packaging design uqam sylvain allard sustainable recycled tofu cereales killer