Creative Agency: arithmetic
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Packaging Content: Candles
Location: Canada

ON PACKAGE DESIGN AS GIFT-GIVING
Materiality was so important to us: the tactility of how these boxes feel. We’ve always looked at packaging as gifts. We love picking out gifts for people, but we give enough gifts to ourselves. Since we are consumers, we naturally buy things— so what better way to utilize the skill set of packaging, than to help people gift something to themselves?

We look at a box as not just a vessel to protect—that is one function of it for sure, to keep the object safe—but how can we make the box look like a gift in a store, and then behave like a gift later on? Say you bought a candle for yourself because it looked interesting or pretty in the store. When you take it home and open it, you’re forced to have a moment with yourself: with the string tied around the washer, it’s a forced slowness. You can’t just rip it open and throw it away. Instead you start to feel the preciousness of the product, and your personal experience with it. As you open the white box there’s a build-up, and that surprise splash of colour inside offers a pleasant surge of delight.