Project Study: Doritos Package

What started as a school project turned out to be a very serious concept of a new package for Doritos. In the created hands of the student and designers Petar Pavlov everything is designed for a reason and here you will learn everything about this package design project. Make sure you leave your comment with your opinions about it.

For more from Petar, visit his behance and follow him on twitter

The whole project started as a student exercise where I was supposed to work on an open-brief provided by YCN (http://www.ycnonline.com/).

At the beginning of my research regarding this project, I analyzed what makes Doritos different than its competition. The result was obvious: its shape and its texture. So this was the starting point in the design.

I started looking for everything that contained a triangular shape. The first thing that struck my mind was the tetrahedron, used in the famous Tetra Pak packaging (http://bit.ly/hv9Oq). I spent a lot of time trying to 'force' this packaging form to work for the chips, but I never succeeded in doing that. That was an important lesson for me: "You can never force something to happen in design. The final solution should 'land' as a feather without any kind of pressure."

After confronting with this failure, I extended my search in some new areas: origami (http://bit.ly/18wMZX) and paper tessellation (http://bit.ly/10LhVo). This gave me a totally new angle in the concept. But one important part was still missing: a link between the packaging and the original homeland of the chips, Mexico. So I digged deep into the Mexican history which brought me to their ancient ancestors, the Aztecs and their recognizable sculptures, the totem poles (http://bit.ly/CCQoh).

This was the breakthrough in the project. Afterward I started making some sketches and creating small paper models in order to test the solutions.

During this phase I came up with the final form of the packaging which resembled to a simplified totem, and even had an extra feature: the structure kept the packaging closed after opening. If it wasn't for the small paper models, I would have never discovered this. That's why moving out from the computer work during a project is important.

The packaging can be made out of environmentally friendly cardboard. What's good about this material is its natural texture which slightly resembles to the one of the chips. The form of the packaging is its structure which can keep the chips closed after opening. Below you can see a scaled-down model of how this works.

Brand-wise, this solution will differentiate Doritos from any other competition and build a strong 'shelf effect'.

The other good side about this concept are the triangular faces which beside the ergonomic value, create a perfect canvas for expressive illustrations. That's why I'm inviting every designer willing for collaboration to create a personal artwork which will reflect the attributes of the Doritos chips. The directions are endless, we can focus on visualizing the taste, visualizing the main ingredients or even recreating the reaction after eating some ULTRA HOT SPICY Doritos!

I have prepared a Doritos Template Pack (http://bit.ly/rGY2V) which contains two different layered .psd templates ready for you to apply an artwork. After that the solutions should be submitted inside this Facebook group: http://bit.ly/tQvpU

What you think about this project? Share your opuinion so we can bring you more great project studies like this one.