Student work at University of South Australia. The assignment was to create a new brand and packaging for a product of our choice for a special occasion. To answer the brief, the project explores and delivers a premium packaging design solution for an unconventional gift—bath bomb, for Father’s Day.The brand is aptly named ‘Cannonball’.
The new bath bomb brand is created to target dads, with a brand message that portray dads as kings, and kings deserve nothing less than the best. The brand—Cannonball, plays with its dual meanings:
i) The act of jumping into water with knees hugged tightly to the chest, often with excitement.
ii) A spherical metal ammunition fired from a cannon, often used as defence mechanism in a fort in Medieval / Middle Ages. The device aligns with the ‘fit for a king’ message.
i) The act of jumping into water with knees hugged tightly to the chest, often with excitement.
ii) A spherical metal ammunition fired from a cannon, often used as defence mechanism in a fort in Medieval / Middle Ages. The device aligns with the ‘fit for a king’ message.
The packaging key visual features a naked king illustration doing a ‘cannonball’ causing a splash, in simple line art with hatching, consistent with the era’s art style, but with a playful twist. The brand opts for striking, bold, neon, energetic colours as accent colours, such as a bright orange to create contrast to the otherwise neutral earth colour palette of beige and black backdrop.
The simple icons for the four USPs were constructed inspired by heraldic emblems and the suites from playing cards. They sat on shields—another Medieval motif, hung against a backdrop of brick layered castle wall. Additionally, different scents can be represented by different patterns borrowed from coat of arms in different accent colour. The front of the box is embellished with gold foil stamp logotype and inner arch border to look exclusive and expensive.
As it is a premium brand, the end user’s unboxing experience is just as important as the product itself. The packaging is essentially a box with a top lid—a format common in expensive cologne, jewellery, and watches. Rejecting a square box, the packaging adopts a hexagonal form that securely wraps around the bath bomb nice and tight.
The bottom box is constructed with a piece of paper with folding lines and no adhesive. Its inner side lined with a starburst pattern, with the bath bomb sitting at the centre as focal point, like a baseball in a glove. When unboxed, it spreads out once top lid removed, mimics the explosion effect of a cannonball or a bath bomb.
Top lid, styled as a castle tower, has a smaller hexagon diecut window to reveal product and allow consumers to sample scent without opening the box. The parapets on top of the castle are not merely decorative, they allow the box to stack on top of each other more securely. The hexagon shape of the packaging also means that the boxes can be arranged in a honeycomb fashion to save space, which translate into savings in logistic cost.
