S Lester were recently reached out to by a specialist hardware supplier to the architectural ironmongery, partitioning, and door manufacturing industry. They had a reel product that they required a pack redesign for. The current design, consisting of two circular double wall pieces of board taped to either end of a cylindrical fiberboard tube, was unprofessional in appearance and required a lot of time and skill to create, proving to be cost-ineffective.
In order to better understand the task at hand, S Lester broke the design down into sub-sections. The main strength of support currently came from the cylindrical corrugated fiberboard, therefore, a redesign of this was prioritised. Other sub-sections included how the two circular pieces of board were attached to the fiberboard.
In designing the new pack, S Lester had to ensure that it was secure, as, without a sturdy, self-strengthening design, the product would fail. The product would also need to be assembled in a shorter time frame than the previous pack without the need for additional material, e.g. tape/glue.
To identify solutions to these challenges, the team developed various prototypes. These would explore a range of concepts that would try to replicate the strength and usability of the current product. From these prototypes, the team could narrow down the concepts until one design was proven to be the most appropriate.
Ultimately, the final designed pack was split into four separate sections. This enabled the strength to be evenly distributed across the product, rather than putting pressure on a taped-up fixed point. The sections were made up a single material, meaning assembly was both faster and easier. This also meant that the pack was 100% recyclable and could be easily disposed of through established recycling chains. This met and exceeded all of the requirements set out by the client in the initial brief.
