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5 Questions With Susu Studio

by Elizabeth Freeman on 10/11/2016 | 4 Minute Read

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Can’t stop won’t stop. Every week we bring you The Dieline’s Top 10 packaging projects and articles to inspire and boost creativity, but why stop there? Our 5 Questions With series allows us to sit down with the best of the best here on The Dieline and dig deeper into these fascinating projects, from the design process to the biggest challenges. For our first ever article in this discussion series we’re chatting with Susu Studio, an Australia-based design and creative studio, about their work for their work on Full Brow.


1.Walk us through the design process that you went through for this project.

Full Brow came to us with a new product line, a wordmark and a blank slate for the product packaging. The brief was quite open stylistically, apart from a clear desire to appear ‘contemporary’ and ‘premium’. We started by teasing out a personality for the brand, building a well-formed profile of the audience – which turned out to be a lot broader than anticipated. 

Due to a quick turnaround time, this had to quickly progress through to design development. Early on, we established a strong colour palette that we felt was super important in appealing to this far-reaching demographic. As we also knew the product range had potential to use an (extremely) wide-range of packaging shapes, the wild original artwork was another element we earmarked to carry the brand. Setting out with this clear plan allowed the process to continue productively at all stages.

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2.What was one of the biggest goals you set out to achieve with this packaging and how did you accomplish it?

The simple goal was to provide something fresh and ambitious. The cosmetic industry is very competitive and the packaging often falls into familiar visual communication tropes & trends – at the time of Full Brow’s inception, minimal packaging was most frequent. Without completely ignoring the current market, we wanted to go against the grain and push a unique direction as much as possible – given that is a cliché itself. We didn’t see the point in creating something safe that would get lost amongst competitors. These little packages needed to be bold and cut through. Thankfully, Full Brow weren’t scared of trying something different for a new product and they trusted our judgement.

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3.What was the most challenging part of this project?

Being Australian designers, the FDA design rules were somewhat pedantic and new for us, but understandable.

Working within such small size specifications was challenging in consideration of presenting the vibrant graphics whilst retaining readability. It’s a very delicate line between landing the visual punch, but still actually getting the vital information across with a limited surface area.

One aspect of the process that particularly stands out however, is the hair-splitting intricacies of applying the full-wrap artwork to the packaging templates. Due to the numerous folding parts, it wasn’t as simple as placing the artwork onto the template and making a few tweaks. We had to create endless iterations of test packages and mark-ups in order to get each side to eventually flow gracefully. We may have under-estimated that task!

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4.If you could pick one aspect of the finished design that you like the most or feel especially proud of, what would it be and why?

The colours. THE COLOURS! It just pops and you can see the packages from a mile away. Seeing the full set stacked together on a display stand looks as head-turning as we had hoped.

Admittedly, the response to the artwork has us smiling and feels like a positive validation of our ambitions. Some of our friends have purchased Full Brow products purely based on the packaging (unknowing that we had designed it) – a huge compliment! Having the initial plan and approach, then seeing it bear fruit is always something to be proud of. 

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5.Share one lesson that you learned while working on the project.

We had to relinquish some of the creative control (for example, we only had limited input with production). In an ideal arrangement, we would love to be involved at every stage when we have a clear vision – however, it didn’t transpire this time. This bruised our ego, yet reminded us that we can’t expect full control to be handed over every time.

More importantly, it also confirmed that the colour teal is still cool.

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