Based on the strength of an exclusive portfolio of monoclonal antibodies, Indoor Biotechnologies has become the world leader in detection of indoor allergens. In addition to the antibodies, InBio developed a consumer product kit to detect household allergens. The kit consists of a dozen parts in a clear plastic clamshell. The challenge they brought to us was to make that clamshell sing. Visually speaking, of course.
The focus of most packaging – in fact, most commercial art – is to get one or two points across quickly and with gusto. When you get into thinking about an appropriate image to represent a product like this, there are a few options. One is to show the actual product. But, aside from the rare, few phenomenal products, it’s hard to give someone the warm fuzzies from a purely product-driven photo. Another option is to make a drive for the warm fuzzies with people photos. We took the people photo route and selected a photo with a mother, father and young child. Then, using additional graphics, focused the message down from the vague happy family feeling to a happy family enjoying their life free of dust allergens. The two “focusing” graphics were a small image of the product and a anti-dustmite image.
To assist in production of the actual product, the manufacturer had a 3D model of the pieces in the kit. We highlighted a small image of the product on the package cover (to balance the lifestyle photo with an image of what a customer would expect to get inside of the can’t-see-through-it-anymore package). And we used several other 3D images to illustrate the accompanying directions on the backside of the label.
We purchased several clamshell-packed products from the local hardware store to share some options with InBio and lead the discussion on how our inserted label would fold, which sides of the container would be left clear versus covered with the label insert, etc. Mockups from that point became much more instructive.
Moving backward somewhat before going forward, we also delved into the name for the product. Lots of words, parts of words, prefixes and suffixes were combined. I’ll spare you the details but the client settled on ventia: rapid allergen test for it’s allusion to the flowing of air. With the name in place and having been user tested at a national conference of allergists, we finalized the text size and the remaining items affected by the name to complete the packaging.
