CenterStage: Spotlighting the pros behind the packaging

A few minutes with…21 Drops’ Amy Rosenthal

Notions of mysterious herbal remedies in boring cardboard boxes went out the window when Cary Caster and her cousin, creative director Amy Rosenthal, teamed on the tone and direction for the packaging of the 21 Drops Aromatherapy Blends. Purpose-Built executed their vision, which resulted in a nomination for Best Packaging Personal Care Prestige in this year’s HBA’s International Package Design Awards.

Beauty Packaging recently caught up with Amy to ask her a few questions about her first packaging design project for the health and beauty market.

Beauty Packaging: How did you arrive in your role as packaging designer for 21 Drops?

Amy Rosenthal: I’ve been designing one thing, or another, for as long as I can remember. I studied communication arts at University of Michigan, then moved on to study design at Parsons. Once I started designing, I never looked back. I’ve designed everything from textiles, to clothing, to jewelry, to spaces (both real, and interactive). Funnily enough, I had never done packaging, per se, until a year and a half ago when my cousin Cary, a clinical aromatherapist, reached out to let me know she wanted to launch a line of essential oils. I love her, and over the years had come to seriously appreciate the science behind her blends, so it felt right. I signed on as the creative director, and the rest, as they say, is history.

BP: What was your inspiration in designing the packaging for 21 Drops?

AR: First it was about defining the brand. The packaging itself simply had to be a manifestation of who and what we are, as a company, and as people. I say ‘simply’ but birthing a brand is never easy. Fun—yes. Easy—no. We set out to understand the marketplace. I wanted to make sure we had a real understanding of people’s level of awareness and acceptance when it came to using essential oils. We needed to understand preconceived notions, to get close enough to the skepticism, cynicism and inherent confusion, in order to understand how to move people past it. Through contextual inquiry we were able to hone in on certain design principles that guided us in our decision-making throughout the process:

• Be accessible. From a packaging perspective, this meant portable. The blends don’t do anyone any good if they are sitting on the shelf of a medicine cabinet. We had to create something people could, and would, carry with them.

• Be contemporary. Health food store shelves are populated with the dusty boxes and bottles of brands leaning backwards toward a ’70s (and sometimes suspect) interpretation of oils and aromatherapy. In order to excite existing users, we had to be fresh. In order to break out of the health food store realm altogether and speak to a new audience, we had to be contemporary.

• Be authentic. Sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many people approach design without ever articulating who and what they are, or understanding who and what they are designing for.

Then we set out to find just the right partners to help us execute. I wanted to bring in someone who had specific experience within the health/beauty industry. And that’s where Kelly Kovack and Larry Paul of Purpose-Built came in.Kelly inherently understood the value of building a brand (not just designing a box). Then we met Larry, and that cinched it. The collaboration yielded something truly extraordinary. Collaboration can offer inspiration in and of itself.

BP: How did you approach the design?

AR: I approach all new design projects the same way, regardless of medium: requirements gathering; contextual inquiry; ethnographic study.

BP: What does 21 Drops bring to the packaging/product marketplace?

AR: To the product marketplace: we hope the beginning of a movement. Okay, that sounds a bit haughty. But that was the crux of Cary’s intention when she first reached out. She wanted to help a broader audience begin to open up to the benefits of all-natural approaches to health and wellbeing.

To the packaging marketplace:a nod to the power of the design process. With such bold aspirations, the packaging had to be something special.

BP: Were there any particular challenges in executing the design?

AR: Heh. You mean aside from the ubiquitous too-tight timelines and the tricky borders where budgets overtake ideas? Yes. We had challenges. One in particular was in the actual execution of the boxes. This is definitely a complex job, and we were having a hard time finding a printer who could handle it. I also had a somewhat unusual requirement: I didn’t want us to lay down white on the Kraft before we printed the colors. I actually wanted the color distortion that comes when printing on material as porous and inconsistent as Kraft. This made certain vendors understandably uneasy. Ira Wechsler and the folks at Prestone Printing ultimately swooped in to save the day. They were willing to take risks and push right along with us to get something great. They’ve done a fantastic job.

BP: How were the materials chosen? The suppliers?

AR: We chose the materials based on function and intention. I mentioned that the bottles needed to be portable. That was a fundamental functional requirement of the design. That’s where the sleeve comes into play. And the recycled Kraft, well that’s all about our intention.

Finding the right materials and suppliers was part of the design process from the start. We were asking for things that had not been done before, on both primary and secondary packaging, so we needed to find suppliers who could, and would, engineer solutions with us. Purpose-Built has a great roster of resources and we relied on that.

BP: What are you working on now?

AR: 21 Drops. 21 Drops. 21 Drops.