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Back to School Collection

by Jenifer Tracy on 09/11/2015 | 10 Minute Read

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It’s officially September and school is back in session. This usually consists of a shopping trip for back to school supplies, which isn’t always very exciting. This month I decided to poke around and look for items that were interesting and unique, which also had some nice packaging design. I came to find that the eco-trend is big, and many of the products are packaged to visually reflect that selling point. I also noticed a handful of British items which were on the comical side of the desk accessory options. I hadn’t realized the Brits were so goofy (check out the push pins & paperclips featured below). Overall, I found the school supply market to be enormous and quite saturated. It’s easy to stand out from the crowd by simple stepping up the packaging design of the products being sold. 


1. Suck UK Push Pins

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Abulletin board is a student essential for the bedroom. A place to hang pictures or that cute birthday card with a dog on it, your friend gave to you. A little board of personality that makes you smile. Stepping away from the usual push pins you can buy at Target, there is a playful line of pins by the UK based company, Suck UK, that will hold your notes up while also brightening your board.

There are three cute and unique sets of pins – Disguise pins, the Scottish Loch Ness Monster pins and Mr. Mole pins. The packaging for this line is bright and cheerful and features a high contrast color palette. Each of the point of sale displays has a lively illustration on the back panel which shows off the different designs, and at a larger scale so that it’s easier for the consumer to see. All text is set in lower case fonts, including the typeset logo, which adds a lighthearted mood to the design. There is no need to settle for boring pins, get your creative self out and start pinning.

2. My Mojo

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My Mojo is a eco-friendly stationery products company with a name I just didn’t understand. But once I saw their tagline: “Doing your bit for the planet is good for your mojo” I had to chuckle. Quite amusing and definitely an original concept. 

My Mojo has a great range of products that can be packed up for taking back to school. They offer a Kids Mojo Stationery Pack so you can purchase an assortment of recycled pencils, notebooks and wooden pencil sharpeners in one swoop. Their product packaging features artwork that has a rough, but playful hand drawn quality about it. The brand color palette is as close to fluorescent as you can get without printing with speciality inks. It sure won’t be overlooked on the shelves. What I find really fun about the art direction is the typography, which seems to be customized for this brand. Illustrated to look like a child’s penmanship, it’s full of little details such as a recycle sign or an eco footprint reversed out of the letters. Whimsical design from a company that's dedicated to a sustainable future while making every day products children need. 

3. Luckies Sardine Paperclips

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It’s hard to make this decision, but I think Luckies Sardine Paperclips win the cutie tootie award for this blog post. The little sardine shaped paperclips are packaged up into a cool, reusable sardine tin which might actually pass for the real thing when sitting on the shelf. Your kids can keep their “ocean of pages neat and organized” with these sardine paper clips! 

The silver colored tin has a blue and green color palette, with an illustration of a sardine on the top lid. A faux pull tab is set off to the edge, but that tab is only decorative with the lid directly lifting up and allowing the tin to be reusable. I’d be going clip happy if these guys ended up in my backpack, or I’d just be gift happy if someone picked them up for my birthday this month. 

4. Paperchase Tape

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When I was living in London, it didn’t take long before I discovered the store Paperchase. In business for over 40 years (their logo needs a serious refresh), the store is full of well-designed office supplies, arts and crafts materials, greeting cards and gifts. Most likely, you could pick up the majority of your school supplies all under this one roof. 

While the entire store is full of well designed, fun things which I don’t REALLY need, it was their brand name scotch tape that stood out.

Who in the world creates cute packaging for scotch tape? Paperchase. That’s who! The design concept uses colorful strips of tape to make a graphic patterned background. The colored strips of tape have a transparency to them, and as they criss-cross over each other new colors are created. This has been a pretty popular design trend over the recent years, but it’s really a perfect match when designing for a line of clear (transparent) tape. Paperchase has executed the designs perfectly. 

5. Brilliant Bee Beeswax Crayons

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For the younger students, art supplies are an important thing to add to the shopping list. The parents of today’s generation are concerned with the toxic chemicals and other questionable ingredients being used to make art supplies, so naturally an eco-friendly market of crayons, paints and doughs has developed.  Two brands whose packaging design stood out to me in this arena were Brilliant Bee Crayons and eco-dough®. The two products have very different art directions, while still being positioned within the same market. 

Brilliant Bee Crayons are made out of beeswax, as their name suggests, and come packaged in a sunny yellow box with a honeycomb pattern. The design is playful and bright, just how a box of colorful crayons should be! And showing off the vivid colors inside, there is a die cut peek-through window on the front of the box. The word “crayons” is cheerfully spelled out in a hand lettered, poster style type, with each letter being a different color. They even advertise the packaging as being a “beautiful reusable case” – eco everything for this product! Triangular in shape and easy for little hands to grasp, crayons rolling off the table are a thing of the past. 

6. Eco-Dough®

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The second environmentally friendly art supply line I came across was eco-dough®. A Los Angeles based business that first introduced their line of natural (play) dough at my local Hollywood Farmers Market in 2008 (fun fact!). The eco-dough® brand has expanded over the years to also include paints, crayons and easter egg dye. The range of their products have a kid friendly art direction, with packaging that visually matches the company’s ethos. 

The color palette is earthy and vibrant, but without crossing the line to being described as “vivid.” It reflects the colors of the plant, fruit and vegetable extracts that are used in the products – a raspberry red, soft butter yellow, a spring green. The design work is made up of easy shapes, hand prints and circles, and the typography is set in an all lower case typewriter font. Most of the products are packaged in a variety of brown craft paper containers, adding to the eco aesthetic of the brand. Their art supplies are made with all natural ingredients, which equals peace of mind for the parents. The packaging is upbeat and well crafted, which equals easy on the eyes for me! 

7. EarBudeez

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Every student needs some earbuds for the school commute, whether on the bus or walking by yourself. And, there couldn’t be a more entertaining packaging concept out there than these cartoon faced EarBudeez! Packaged in a round, tin shaped case, the brand created a series of characters whose eyes are represented by the product inside (the earbuds). Each one has its own unique personality, with the “eyes” positioned differently to create a little wink or angry eyes. There is a character for everyone – a cute blonde girl with a pink barrette, a little dude with a blue hat and glasses, a skull...the list goes on. Fortunately, the price point for Earbudeez is reasonable, we don’t want parents having to break the bank on a school supply that some might just consider a fashion accessory. 

8. Takenaka Bento Box

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Back to school and parents are back to packing lunches. Japanese style Bento Boxes are a pretty cool solution for kids who bring their lunch to school. Bentos are portable and similar to packed lunches that might contain a sandwich or fruit, but they’re a much cuter solution. 

The Takenaka Bento Box brand has been around for 90 years in Japan and recently launched in the U.S. market in 2012. Everything about the Takenaka brand feels easy, minimalistic and pleasing to the eyes. Their Bento Box logo mark is a light weight san serif font with a crossed spoon and fork to create the “X.” I loved this small reference that spoke to the American market, since we all know the Japanese are eating from their bentos with chopsticks. The color palette is a soft rainbow of colors and seeing the boxes placed together is practically a work of art. Go ahead and shake things up, throw that American sandwich into an Japanense box! 

9. The School of Life

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Another discovery I made while in London was an introduction to The School of Life. Self described, The School of Life is “Devoted to developing emotional intelligence. A place to step back and think intelligently about central emotions.” As you can see from this description, this next back to school supply is geared towards the college student! 

The School of Life have developed a line of Key Word Pencil Sets, all packaged beautifully in a range of gender neutral colors.  Each set features a theme from an academic discipline and then has six of the most important words from that discipline printed on the individual size pencils. That’s the concept behind the project, now let me tell you about their beautiful design.  These six pencils are both elegant and educational, coming packaged in buckram finished boxes and with a definition book. The front of each pencil case has a simple, black line art illustration of a pencil which has the theme for that pack printed within the slender shape. “Six Keyword Pencils” is typeset in a small, light weight san serif font right below. And, in the bottom left corner sits The School of Life logo, the words stacked into three lines, a bold font, no fuss. The restrained minimalism in this packaging is exquisite. This product is for the big kids only, no grubby mouths should be chewing on these.


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Written by Jenifer Tracy

Jenifer Tracy is the owner and Creative Director of JENCO CREATIVE, a boutique graphic design studio founded in 2007 in sunny Los Angeles. Jenifer’s work has been recognized as smart, effective and inspired and has won multiple awards. Having worked with a diverse range of clients from theGot MILK campaign to Mary J. Blige, Jenifer has a relentless desire to create quality work that expresses her client’s personality and vision.

On a personal note, Jenifer splits her time between Los Angeles and London, is a French Bulldog enthusiast and a “cute shit” collector. As a designer with a deep love for pretty packaging, Jenifer is thrilled to be blogging for The Dieline, a site she’s been a fan of for years. Jenifer spends her spare time dog walking her frenchie Pippin, getting her nails done and napping. She’s also known for being a big loud talker and laughing a lot.