In India, sweets are a big deal during festivals and as we grew up, we may not have understood why we celebrated a particular festival, but we surely recalled every one of them with the sweet or savoury associated with it. Hence when it came to designing packaging based around sweets in Bizongo Design Lab, we picked Kaju Katli, our all time favourite.
In this project, we tried to challenge the stereotypical idea of a diamond shaped/ square Kaju Katli, and decided to have it cut according to what the concept demanded. Another thought that was in our minds was about how all the sweet boxes were discarded once people consumed the sweets. And considering the amount of sweets we consume as a nation, that’s a lot of boxes we are talking about! So we began thinking in a direction that attracted interactiveness in packaging so that people see value in retaining it. We wanted something unique and with an element of fun that usually went hand-in-hand with festivity, and that is when we hit upon the idea of tangrams. A Tangram is a Chinese geometrical puzzle consisting of a square cut into seven pieces which can be arranged to make various other shapes.
What could these Chinese puzzles have anything to do with Kaju Katlis? Nothing until now, but there are many advantages this presents. Firstly, it is great that once the sweet is consumed, the packaging becomes an interactive plaything. Tangrams are for all ages and hence transcend to becoming a family game. Received too many Kaju Katli boxes? No problem! The game gets bigger and better. Add the tans and make more interesting shapes out of your imagination.
Another advantage is that these seven tans would divide the bigger box into seven smaller boxes, making it easier to share or allot sweets to a large family or the diet conscious. So we went ahead and prototyped one such box. Challenging convention again, we decided to have a big black box of these tangram sized boxes with a silver ribbon that resonated with the shimmery silver that we usually find on Kaju Katlis. Along with that, a small square insert detailing the game and giving a few interesting shapes that one could try was placed within the box.
Outer Box
Insert regarding the concept of Tangrams
Insert with a few interesting shapes one can try making with the tans (inner boxes)
The box with the inserts
Inner boxes/ tans
You can read more about this on the Bizongo blog:
