Making something understandable as opposed to just simplifying: “

Sometimes when you come across something that is just perfect you have to just take a step back to try to understand why it’s great. An easy way for me to do that is by taking a ton of photos of it (or blog about it) to see what I can gain from a second view point. Before opening the tag package from my new Freitag bag I had no idea as to what was going to open up in front of me. 99.9% percent of tags for a bag are unremarkable - it’s an after thought, why bother doing anything with it? You’re going to buy the bag so why bother. It’s an unfortunate theme that isn’t just about bags. Design being taken advantage of is not a new theme by any means but to see how Freitag made a story about who they are is quite inspiring. Another theme is to cut information for the idea of simplification. Again that’s a bit of a misleading idea. Somethings are complicated, cutting content doesn’t help. Make it understandable instead.

The story of Freitag is that they take material from trucks and turn it into bags. It’s a cool idea, no two bags will ever be the same. Before even opening the one of a kind bag tag kit I noticed an image of the bag printed on the material. The other thing that I noticed was the care to the design of the outside of the package. Designer’s can sometimes get carried away with silly die-cuts and other paper stunts to the detriment of the final package. I consider that arts and crafts. With this package it felt right. After opening the paper I was treated to a fold like map that described the process of how the bag was made. The system that they created and carried through was really cool. There’s a story that wants to be read. The design made it more understandable to read and want to keep. How many times have you opened a map to only be frustrated trying to close it. They even made that an easy exercise. If there’s something to be learned by this packaging exercise it’s this - Etsy has the market covered online with how they connect people with products but that doesn’t mean that print packaging is has to die like most of other print materials. Freitag created a system that made who they are as something understandable.

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(Via DesignNotes by Michael Surtees.)