I had a look at what was already out there and started to think of ideas:
The first one on the left, was one sheet of cardboard that would fold in to a box with an attached lid so no glue was needed.
The design on the right was again one sheet of cardboard but in a hexagon type shape, with a bag made of recycled material that would protect the shoes.
Both ideas were OK but nothing exited me here so I kept thinking. My thoughts went to the secondary use of the box, rather than it just stored away/ thrown away or used as storage, I wanted other ways of using it, so I did some rough sketches of "design cards" that would be printed onto the box to give the consumer some ideas of what else to do with it.
I tried to think are very different ideas for different audiences. The first is a projector for your phone, the second, a plant pot - if the box were made of bio-degradable material, one the seeds were grown enough to be put out side it could all be planted together. And the last one, for the kids, if you have several shoe boxes, paint them to create buildings and roads for the children to play with. Quite simple ideas but I think it would keep the boxes from going straight in the bin.
After going away and thinking about it, I came back the next day and decided I wanted a tall long box that would be enough space for the shoes to fit in but all thinner and smaller, so to use less packaging.
So I came up with this design, using a long thin piece of card (one sheet) and a towel/ cloth that wraps around the shoes to protect them (like what paper or packing peanuts or polystyrene would do) and then this would have a second use by it being a towel for the consumer to re-use again and again.
I started to mess around with how the box would work, here are a few nets that I tried to work with. It really helped me design my box as it showed me what worked and what didn't.
For the first design (on the left), the ends didn't work properly, which you had to fold into each other, i did not think this was stable enough to hold a pair of shoes or that the cardboard would bend as easily as the paper did. And the second design (on the right) the end just did not work, I just couldn't get them to go together without there being some type of glue or something - which is a no no!!
I then used this net (inspired by a box I had found in my house) which worked perfectly without any use of glue or anything, the folds simply fold together to make a box with the lid attached. Now this was too wide and so I needed to make one that would now fit my design and again check that it still worked.
The box does the job right, and is what I wanted it to do. Obviously this is a very very basic prototype and would like to take this further into working with different materials to see what would work with this.
And finally my prototype design sheet. I would make the box out of bio-degradable cardboard so that it can recycled easily. Once the box is made, the shoes would be wrapped in the mirco-fibre towel, which is made from recycled bottle tops. I chose micro-fibre for the towel, because a) it is made from recycled bottle tops. b) it can be re-recycled once reached maximum use, which is a long time. c) it eliminates the need for a chemical cleaner (doesn't need polish). The towel would also have a loop in the middle which comes out of the top of the box in order for it to be carried by the consumer.
I think this design work wells as it has a secondary use from the protective packaging inside, which will last a long time and is a great novelty gift to the consumer - also more advertising space for the company, the towel could be used to advertise their brand. Also making the box from one sheet of cardboard that is 100% bio-degradable means it is extremely easy to be recycled. I wanted to keep the text at a minimum to keep the uses of ink at the lowest it can be, this meant keeping the branding simple and any info small.
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