Feel Better: A packaging project

My allergies keep me sick throughout the year. On average, I find myself in the cold medicine isle of the drug store three to four times a year, bleary-eyed and sniffly, trying to find the right medicine. I am immediately assaulted by harsh geometry and cold, unfeeling or just plain cluttered design like this.

I feel terrible, and all I want is to feel better. I want something that is going to feel like a warm bowl of soup, a cozy blanket and my mom stroking my hair. I want something comforting, and cold medicine packaging is anything but. This is the challenge I decided to take on: make cold medicine look as good as it’s going to make the user feel.

I wanted to create something novel and unexpected. Given the fast approaching deadline, I knew my limitations; I had to go with something I already knew how to do. Thankfully, I learned how to knit in high school, and what’s more comforting than a knit sweater? It was a solid concept; all I had to do was learn to knit pouches and I was set. After some internet research, I quickly learned and applied the technique.

Deciding on the typography was fairly easy, but typesetting the Drug Facts proved to be rather difficult. I wanted the look and feel to be simple, but there is a lot of information that is legally required to be on medicine packaging. But, this is why I love design: there are certain rules and challenges you have to figure out how to work around. All in all, I feel very proud of my work, even though these are all just mock-ups, and I hope to push the concept even further and really develop these into something fantastic.