Duracell Tinker Edition

Design: Aastha Mehta, Abraham Sebastian, Mathew Samuel
Project Type: Student Project
School: MIT Institute of Design
Location: Pune, India
Packaging Contents: Battery cells
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Paper, copper tape

As Duracell’s material guideline continuously transitioned to become less stressful on the environment, the focus of their iconic limited editions shifted from being physical objects to digital interactions. Keeping those ethos on material selection intact, we wanted to create a limited edition series that was tangibly distinct and aimed at where batteries and cells are celebrated, the DIY community.

Creating the right required voltage flow for your build is vital and if there isn’t a battery holder, that would often mean loads of wires and electrical tapes wrapped around cells.

The idea is to build a packaging for the cells that could connect to each other in a fun and easy way to become a battery in series. We found an interesting way to make the conductivity happen on the packaging itself, with copper tapes. Stick the tape on any surface to make it a conductor. We looked at different ways to interlock the package in a way that mates the opposite terminals as well as takes less space and sits compactly on the surface.

What’s Unique?
Tinker edition is a functional packaging which is part of the dry cell (Duracell) use cycle with inter-lockable swaps that makes the cell into a battery in series.