Tiny Packaging Project

What do you do at the beginning of the Graphic Design year when students may or may not yet have access to their new Adobe accounts?  You jump into packaging on a tiny level.  

When I interned at Jelly Belly this summer with their Creative Team, one member showed me a wonderful book that included dielines, something used in industry to build cool packaging products.  Inside the book are hundreds and hundreds of die lines or templates that can be used to build prototypes of different boxes and containers. 

The book comes with a link to download the files digitally so you can use the dielines as you wish.  I bought some simple card stock that I ran through a regular desktop printer and chose 4-5 designs to print for the students. 

They were required to build the boxes and then design a package for a candy line called "Life is Sweet." I even gave them little tiny samples of Jelly Belly Beans to put in their boxes! I was a great hand-on project to begin the year and gave us a reason to talk about color, line, use of space and how it looks on the shelf. What a nice way to jump into design right away.  This would also be a great smaller filler project for when a teacher needs something at the end of the semester or at the end of a project. I like that fact that it had students thinking about the nicer parts of life too.