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Clever Negative-Space Package Design Wins Design of the Year 2013

By Rain Noe - April 17, 2013

in Social Impact | Packaging

Here's a brilliant example of how a couple is using design, and cleverly exploting an existing system, to do some good in the world. British social entrepreneur Simon Berry is the founder and CEO of ColaLife, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting diarrhea. Don't laugh; diarrhea kills people in developing nations and is the second-largest cause of child mortality worldwide. The problem can be addressed with rehydration solutions—a combination of water, salt and sugar [Ed. Note: see our recent case study on Hydropack]—that are simple for us to create in the developed world, but the problem is getting these kits to the people who need them.

Realizing this, Berry and his wife Jane came up with the Kit Yamoyo. These are rehydration kits designed to fit neatly between the bottles, in the negative space, of a crate of Coca-Cola. Because Coke is already delivered everywhere in the world (except Cuba and North Korea) to a global network of eager distributors, the Kit Yamoyo enjoys the hard-won distribution might of one of the world's largest multinational corporations.

Here's the interesting part: While the clever package design of the Kit Yamoyo was enough to get Coca-Cola's attention (following a Facebook campaign) and get them to back a pilot program in Zambia, none of the Kits are actually being transported in the way they were designed. "Not a single retailer has put a kit in a crate," Berry told Wired, above a photo of a retailer receiving the product in ordinary cardboard boxes.

However, that may not matter. Coke is still helping to distribute the product, getting it where it needs to go with their already-in-place network. And it was the package design that got ColaLife on their radar. That's why London's Design Museum named ColaLife the winner of their Design of the Year 2013 Award in the Products category.

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dimitrios

11 years ago

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Very interesting case, but what does "negative space" even mean?
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bob

11 years ago

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budweiser is undrinkable and I ate ramen noodles for 7 years straight- I will always turn down a budweiser unless it came with some medicine that took away the dry heave sensation.
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Jonathan Brill

11 years ago

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As a side note, Anheiser-Busch packs and distributes water for emergencies. An incredible life saving service that they don't promote for whatever reason... I'm concerned that they might not be cleaning their machinery.

I suspect it's why Budweiser tastes like water.
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