"Just Add Water!" Speculative Identity
Produced for the Manus Et. Machina course, this project is a speculative concept of a futuristic supermarket product. These meal raisins are conceptualizations of freeze-dried, raisin-sized portions of entire meals that would rehydrate to their full forms in 1-2 minutes. It aims to address key challenges such as convenience, time-saving, and food preservation through freeze-drying technology.
The marketing design is meant to simultaneously bring people together while still being discomforting, to reflect the dystopian future envisioned.
After extensive research and brainstorming, the final branding design of a raisin-man mascot was finalized with advice from Molly Ritmiller, Design Lab Manager at NYU Tandon, who said,
“Since these will be whole meals of different flavors, you might want some sort of general branding, and then customizable aspect to change with each different meal (the colors, a symbol, etc), and you could go a more minimalist route with some character for each meal in this way."
The final mascot, who is customizable in color and accessories to suit different variations of the product.
This is seen in the three variations of package branding. Each one has a color scheme of four colors that visually stand out to represent three different meals, marketed towards different audiences and reflecting different ideas.
- Chicken Tenders and Fries: Marketed towards children
- Mixed Sushi and Tempura: Controversiality of raw food
- Chicken Machboos and Potato: Cultural assimilation and regional specificity
