The project brief initially was to design packaging for a niche, natural beauty products brand, Gulnar, which eventually became more like a branding assignment. Being an upcoming brand meant for mostly international tourists, Gulnar wanted the packaging to appeal to their aesthetic sense. Further, the brand wanted to differentiate itself from its Indian competitors by projecting a friendly yet quirky feel that did not look essentially Indian.
One of the biggest challenges was to come up with appropriate sourcing, production and printing solutions for the packaging and labelling keeping in mind that the quantities in which the products were produced and distributed were really low. In the beginning, a lot of research involved studying the competitors. After many different approaches, the final look and feel was a colourful, illustration-based one that brought out the brand values effectively.
The brand went through a big change towards the end of the project by reducing the range of products to only soaps, which affected the look and feel to a large extent as the colours were initially decided as a system according to a particular natural ingredient. However, the concept of using simple line-drawings of people using the products was retained. The product dummies with the new packaging were tested in actual retail stores.
My contribution to the brand through this project was to bring about the desired, sophisticated yet approachable quality to the brand. I had to come up with optimum solutions within the set limitations.
During the project, there was a lot of learning at different levels, for instance there were lots of technical issues associated with an upcoming, niche brand: there were very low quantity requirements for everything. I learnt that there are many more limitations in a real project, not necessarily apparent all at once and clearly.
