Shipping, transporting, and moving around products can inflict a lot of abuse on boxes, sometimes damaging the products within. For expensive consumer technology, like say a flat-screen television, their boxes are an indispensable line of defense against damage in transit.
As such, electronics manufacturers often turn to thick, corrugated paperboard to protect their goods. While these boxes are usually recyclable, their size and weight make it difficult for consumers to recycle through curbside pickup. However, with a little bit of creativity, the heavy card stock can get utilized elsewhere, repurposed, breathing new life into existing materials.
Samsung’s Eco-Packaging used to house their Frame, Serif, and Sero lines of televisions, is designed to be repurposed, with a dot matrix guide and instructions to make a TV console, storage box, magazine rack, or a cat house.
Samsung hopes to introduce the packaging concept to a broader audience with new patterns and has now teamed up with online architecture and design magazine Dezeen to host a contest seeking innovative repurposing designs.
The Samsung “Out of the box” competition is open to anyone over 18 years old and features a prize pool of $20,000. Entries will be accepted until May 29th, with winners announced at the electronics trade show IFA Berlin in the fall. You can find the full design brief here.
