October 2019–January 2020
Branding, Package Design
Adobe Illustrator
During my time at Bauhaus University, we were encouraged to frame "everyday apocalypses" in new ways. I chose to focus on the inequitable distribution of benefits and harm in food production, where anesthetic packaging conceals the journey of our food products and encourages us to unknowingly contribute to the everyday apocalypse of unethical practices. Guilty Pleasures is a satirical line of upscale whole food products that confronts consumers with the weight of their choices beyond nutrition, through packaging that is still anesthetic yet blunt.
Traditional food packaging adds another degree of separation between consumers and the various unsustainable and unethical issues in food production by revealing only the desired, and sometimes even falsified, benefits of each item. Guilty Pleasures directly states the negative impacts of purchasing the products yet encouraging consumers to do so for health benefits.
It's not only junk food that can be guilty. Products in the Guilty Pleasures line include cashews, almonds, eggs, and Arabica coffee beans.
Each Guilty Pleasures product presents the nutrition facts next to a message about the practices that went into producing it.
I designed the package of the cashews and almonds without glue so that it can be opened in stages. The cashew box on the left shows the form meant for pouring, while the box on the right shows a bowl meant for sharing.
Guilty Pleasures began as a luxury food brand. This stemmed from the thinking that many buy unsustainably sourced food out of affordability, and so by marketing higher end products, I would reach the consumers who could afford to buy more consciously. I had the idea to take regular, healthy produce items and make the packaging as fancy and kitschy as possible. Examples include packaging eggs like chocolates, and trail mix (various nuts + cranberries) in individual jars as caviar.
The final line up of products was decided based on my research of the different products. I am aware that sustainable practices do exist, and so I specifically targeted foods by location, such as California almonds, in order to directly connect consumers to the food supply chain.
My idea shifted from luxury foods when I realized there were other ways to show novelty and kitschiness without simply copying existing packaging. This manifested best in the egg packaging, which is meant to look visually appealing and show off the aesthetic quality of the eggs, while being entirely impractical for transportation and storage due to the delicate eggs being completely exposed.
To push the idea of an anesthetic package, I wanted Guilty Pleasures to be bright and abstract rather than using natural tones or organic patterns. I built the logo using geometric shapes and represented each food through a simplified version of its form.
