These minimalist, yet fully loaded, coffee powder packs, were created with location, design love and sensitivity in mind. Brown paper has and will always be a color and texture that speaks of fresh aromas and robust flavours. Details I loved: The intensity of the coffee depicted with a simple line that gets stronger or lighter. The QR code that leads to more about the product, leaving the packaging clean, and the weather vane that has farm animals in poses we’re so used to loving!
What good is a cover if it doesn’t let you judge what’s inside by it’s design?
The Village Spices, founded by Shri Rukmanni Ammal in 1959, sells the kind of spices that got people to India on slow-moving ships for it, and its packaged to reflect the care, quality and scents of those times too. Solid colours for the newness of today, merged with fine line art and serifed fonts to go back to a time when kitchens were slow, mellow aroma-filled spaces. See the range here.
The way a bag is designed can change the weight you feel while carrying things in it. I came across this bag at Organicz4U, the neighbourhood organic store. The wooden sticks were what attracted me to them initially, but later Parvez, the owner, explained that it’s designed to make my weekly grocery load feel lighter.
Maithreyi of Wild Ideas who designed the bag, runs a cooperative that makes all things organic for the home. The bag featured here is just one of 16 cloth bags they distribute to grocery stores. It’s called the ‘katte pai with neem handles’ and can easily and comfortably hold up to 10 kilos.
Wild Ideas is a community-based cooperative of disadvantaged women based in Tiruvannamalai. The group makes 100% organic and handmade products.
While looking at their product range I also discovered a small, beautiful detail. That their soap packages carry an illustration of the Arunachala hill in Tiruvannamalai. A hill that’s considered one of the five most important Shaivite sites in India.
So in-sync when community, design and goodness all come together to change a simple everyday moment like carrying a heavy grocery bag up to a car.
To know more about Wild Ideas, you can email maithreyi.ratan@yahoo.com
To shop at an organic grocery store that knows the farms and the people who provide them with their veggies, click here.
The team here love their soles so much that even while sending it away, they send it away with love. The packages in which your TSS sandals, brogues or slip-ons arrive in are softly cloth-padded, easy-to-open, delicately colour-coded in hues of raw cotton and earth. And most importantly, reusable – ‘Send an old book away to an old flame’ kind of reusable. Or ‘pack your swimming goggles into them for a trip’ style reusable.
Things I liked most – The jute bow-tie strings, the embroidered brand patch, and of course, the soft padding that makes sure no matter how delicate your footwear, it’ll arrive home preciously safe.
Find The Sole Sisters on FB here.
Kitschy Indian art has always been a likely winner at international ad festivals. Here we see a classic formula. Sex + Ethnic art = Silver
Just hoping a few truckers out there are actually using this, because the problem is real and the packs out there, far too few. Tata Motors really should make this a nation-wide campaign (if it isn’t already) so that every highway-blaring driver out there gets these colourful, uber distracting condoms to rip and place atop a creaky cot under the stars.
Via – CC, of The Sole Sisters & here.
p.s –
Dipper refers to lorry headlights, not the organ.
Nicobar (Good Earth’s hipster arm) has come out with an innovative little piece that is so connected to all they do and feel. A bar of chocolate crafted exclusively for Nicobar by the talented Mandakini (who was recently featured on their blog for her baked goodnesses). The bar’s packaging features their current tropical palette. How beautifully linked and delicious.
Pics: From the Nicobar FB page and site.
Found a tossed Bira cap in the garden, picked it up and pinned it up on someone’s softboard. Only because of the funky monkey on it.
The rest of this new desi craft beer bottle and the colours on it are just as funky monkey. There’s White where the Bira monkey just stares straight ahead, and there’s Blonde where the Bira monkey holds out a peace sign in Freddie Mercury style.
The best part about the packaging is that they have a Growler. That’s a traditional jar used to carry beer from the brewery to your home. Keeps it fresh and bubbly.
I found Bira at Thoms. And you can read more about Bira here.
Came across this very distinct pack and enjoyed the fragrance within and the very quiet way it didn’t draw attention to itself. Then I visited the Maroma site and realised what honest, fuss-free, simple packaging they have.
Sadly though, not all of them follow this look. Some of their older ranges have a very different look. I’m hoping they’re in transition, and will soon look the same across all their Maroma offerings.
I like the choice of colours, the size of fonts, the placement, the retro shape of the jars and the whiteness of the packs. All of them quite aesthetically put together in perfect balance. Also, their packaging materials are chosen so that they have minimal impact on the environment.
Ma – comes from The Mother (Mirra Alfassa). Aroma – from the first set of incense sticks that kicked off this brand in the 70s.
Official Maroma site is right here.
Doug (dhug means cloud in Marathi) is a hand-crafted bracelet made by women cotton farmers in India to raise money in times of drought. It’s poetic that they’ve chosen the cloud to be a symbol of this hopeful initiative.
The packaging is a simple brown with the thought neatly laid out on the front and the bracelet displayed almost like it’s a floating cloud.
It’s easy-to-make, great to look at and can be neatly parceled off to those who want to help.
Get your Doug here.
Péro, an ethereally lovely handcrafted clothing line and All Things Chocolate, a scrumptiously unique brand of artisan chocolate, come together in these preciously chequered gingham boxes. As collectible as they come, these boxes are. Mostly used to store stash, safety pins and paper clips. Yes, I asked around.
Find All Things here, and Péro here.
We found Hokey Pokey in a wine store. So the TG is obviously us. Here’s to Chardonnay and mango ice cream.
The packaging is simple, fun, plastic, not slippery when frosty and a sweet message outside that asks us to ‘please reuse the tub for something else, like fruits’.
Images from here and one clicked by me.
Find Hokey Pokey online here.
If you blindly love stationery, place an order for Origin One’s surprise box of goodies that’s hand picked from their own collection of design-drooled ware.
Apart from the packaging that comes tied in shoe-lace inspired string and a box that’s covered with enough to keep you from opening it, what I like is the thought. A surprise box you pay for. Fair. Fun.
Order yours here.
Images: Origin One’s insta feed.
Packed In India 