By Andrew Liszewski
Governing bodies have tried many different ways to discourage smoking including dramatically increasing the price of cigarettes through taxes, by forcing tobacco companies to include graphic and disturbing imagery and warnings on the packaging to even requiring them to be hidden away behind closed doors at stores. And while this brilliant redesign of cigarette packaging isn’t the end all solution to the problem, it’s another step that will hopefully discourage more people from smoking.
The flip-top cigarette box is actually incredibly well designed when it comes to portability, accessibility and even marketing. So Eric Askin figured that by breaking the rules of design it could actually discourage people from using a harmful product, and that’s what led to the creation of his diamond-shaped packaging concept. It fits terribly in a pocket, the cigarettes are harder to access or share, less of them can be stacked on a shelf and when they are, the branding is obscured, they’re more difficult to ship and they’re more expensive for tobacco companies to make and manufacture. Of course the new packaging would have to be mandated the same way the current warning labels are, but I think it’s a brilliantly simple way to make the terrible habit even more of an inconvenience.
[ Erik Askin – Design to Annoy ] VIA [ PSFK ]