Second-year students from the Graphic Arts and Design program at Dutchess BOCES’ Career & Technical Institute presented their designs for boxes of BjornQorn, an organic popcorn brand, to Viking Packaging employees April 10, as part of the company’s box challenge.
The class was given a tour of Viking’s factory by Human Resources Manager Sean Brix, where they saw how boxes are made, going from a flat surface to a finished product, as well as a live demonstration of how a box was cut and shaped on a Kongsberg cutting table. Brix parlayed this into a lesson about keeping box designs practical. “They can design anything in here, but the machines can’t produce everything they can produce on this table,” Brix said. “What they have to think about when they’re designing is the capacity of the machines that we have out there and then they have to adjust the designs.”
During the presentations, student Maree Bennett, of Poughkeepsie High School, noted that she and her classmates came up with a final design replicating a dispenser where customers could take a bag out of the box from a hole on the bottom. “We have the popcorn on the top, you just pull it out and it just keeps going down,” Bennett explained.
Viking Lead Designer Eric Lesh noted that a redesign would be needed if the boxes were displayed in a store as employees tear open boxes quickly to get them on the shelves, adding that an eye-catching design with simple information on the front draws shoppers in.
“It’s like a billboard, you want to keep it simple because people are driving by at 60 mph, so you don’t want to have all kinds of fine print,” Lesh said. “If you want it to look nice and presentable, don’t depend on the store employees to do that for you, you have to make it that way.”
Bennett’s cover for BjornQorn’s salty flavor consisted of a blue sky and popcorn on the front with caricatures of the company’s founders on the back and a bird on the top proclaiming it is vegan and gluten free. She was nervous to design and present her idea at first, as she was stepping outside her comfort zone, but enjoyed the process and appreciated the positive feedback Viking staff gave her. Brix even mentioned about sharing the caricatures with BjornQorn’s staff.
“I kept hearing it being talked about so many times, so I didn’t expect that at all,” Bennett recalled. “This could help me in the future too when I talk to clients … I take these types of things very seriously.”
Michael Ramos, of Beacon High School, described the process of coming up with a design as challenging at first before realizing he could make a simple design for the spicy popcorn flavor. He did just that with only the company logo, some text and a popcorn-themed joke across an orange backdrop. He appreciated the opportunity to present to Viking staff at their office, as opposed to doing it in the classroom, and receiving nice comments on his design.
“I was very happy hearing that a simple design could be nice like that,” Ramos said. “I think it’s really cool to talk to actual businesspeople and present something like this.”
At the end of the presentations, Brix praised the students for their designs while noting that package design is a major they can pursue at colleges such as Rutgers or Clemson, if they wish.
“I don’t think we expected them to be this good, they’re really phenomenal,” Brix said. “You clearly all worked really hard on them.”
