Bite Me

Benjamin Johnston

August 28, 2017

1 Comment

This concept project focuses on developing a soap brand through packaging design. The catch? This soap brand needs to appeal to teenagers. So, to convince teens to love this soap, I created a brand story to inspire the brand, the soap itself, and these packaging designs.

"Legend has it that in her reckless youth, Chelsea Handler's parents would wash her mouth out with soap as a punishment for her foul mouth. So, behind their backs, she created a soap that actually tasted good! And now, she's sharing her rebellious recipes with teens worldwide."

From this story, I developed the idea of creating edible soap. That's the product. So to showcase the unconventionality of the soap, I designed the packaging as an invitation to eat this soap by exposing a bite mark from the top corner of the packaging and placing a popsicle stick directly into the soap.

Now, to capitalize on this sassy language from the brand story, I knew I wanted to use bright pops of color that felt thick and unapologetic in nature. The color palette for each flavor references the foul mouth aspect of the branding, and alludes to the tastes of the soaps themselves (Son of a Beach: the tropical flavor, tropical color palette, etc.).

"Bite Me" as a brand name ties together all aspects of the design: the crass from the brand story, the edible feature of the soap product, and the popsicle-like design of the packaging dielines.

For this project I used Adobe Illustrator to design the packaging. To execute, I printed the dielines on thick card stock, folded them, and brought in boutique soap to fill the packaging for representation purposes. All photos were shot and art directed in studio.

The design process for this project required a lot of research, brainstorming, and idea generating before hitting the ground. I believe the more time you spend zoning in on the idea before executing, the better the final deliverables will be. My vision for Bite Me is that this concept would one day become a reality, and teens everywhere can have soap that doesn't taste like s#!t.