Plain & Sweet

TYPE —
Packaging Design
Branding Design

ROLES —
Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Identity,
Illustration, Custom Type

TOOLS —
Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign,
Lasercutter, Canon Rebel T6i

With the goal of introducing Taiwan's famous pineapple cakes and Taiwanese culture to foreigners, this packaging design showcases famous landmarks and Taiwanese food dishes through cheeky illustrations, eco-friendly materials, and a bilingual information booklet.

The Logo Mark

Inspired by the cultural background of pineapple cakes, a custom-designed Chinese calligraphy type became the primary logo wordmark. A rounder structure reflects the packaging's friendliness and invites the viewer to try its contents. The four Chinese characters translate roughly to "plain and sweet", which has its meaning that goes beyond two simple adjectives—these pineapple cakes use ingredients that are made by hand, which suggests the cakes to be pure and natural.

Individual pineapple cakes are carefully wrapped in vegetable-dyed tissue paper and cotton ribbons. Various famous landmarks and food dishes of Taiwan appear as stickers on the front.

Made up of three components: a bento box-like outer packaging, six individually wrapped pineapple cakes, and an informational booklet, Plain & Sweet offers tasty pastries along with a peek inside Taiwan's famous landmarks and good eats.

Research & Sketches

To understand what the current pineapple cake market is like, I first began researching the main competing pineapple cake brands. I found that many brands use culturally symbolic items or colours to brand their packaging. To distinguish Plain & Sweet from existing and more traditional pineapple cakes, I began sketching creative packaging ideas.

How can I package a widely available product in an interesting and innovating way? How can I expand the market by targeting a different audience?

The final decision was to create packages that are visually appealing to draw in customers. Each product comes with fun packaging that is made with less material to promote environmentally-friendly design.

Research & Sketches

To understand what the current pineapple cake market is like, I first began researching the main competing pineapple cake brands. I found that many brands use culturally symbolic items or colours to brand their packaging. To distinguish Plain & Sweet from existing and more traditional pineapple cakes, I began sketching creative packaging ideas.

How can I package a widely available product in an interesting and innovating way? How can I expand the market by targeting a different audience?

The final decision was to create packages that are visually appealing to draw in customers. Each product comes with fun packaging that is made with less material to promote environmentally-friendly design.

Branding Identity

I chose a complementary colour palette to reflect the brand's identity of being warm and welcoming with a touch of modernized simplicity. Karla Regular is used as the main typeface to display the friendly side of the identity. Aside from an English typeface, I also sought out Noto Sans' Chinese family that was modern and similar enough to match its English counterparts.

To display the imperfect qualities that come with handmade products including roughness and simplicity, the logo came to be after many explorations on the computer. Most of the rough quality is retained even after digitizing the logo.

The final step of the visual identity is researching Taiwan's famous travel destinations. This led me to hand paint six illustrations using gouache watercolour.

Packaging Process

To mimic wooden bento boxes often used by Taiwanese people to carry around to-go meals, I used textured paper with ridges to build boxes. Each box is cut out and made from one large sheet of paper to save space and reduce waste.

I created rectangular clay pieces and used Japanese tissue paper dyed in ink to wrap and fold into pineapple-shaped packagings.

Three main nets were created for the outer sleeve, the textured brown box, and the tissue paper wrapped cakes respectively.

The Final Design

The finished piece includes three boxes with each of their own
sleeve illustrations.

The Final Design

The finished piece includes three boxes with each of their own sleeve illustrations.

The informational booklet explains each famous destination or famous dish's history and cultural significance. It is printed on a double-sided sheet of paper and folded into a little booklet.