Meruk – Premium Incense

Design: Tanishqa Bobde
Project Type: Student Project
School: Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design & Manufacturing
Course: Packaging & Branding
Tutor: Prof. Sumer Singh
Location: Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India
Packaging Contents: Incense sticks
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Wood
Printing Process: Laser Etching

Incense sticks are one of the highest exported products from India. The brief of this college project was to design a packaging for an Indian product to be sold in a foreign country. Incense sticks are widely used all over the world, however poor packaging plays a huge role in diluting their use & sale. In order to tackle this problem, I crafted a sustainable, reusable & adaptive packaging for incense sticks along with a brand around it.

The brand is called Meruk – premium incense. Meruk means ‘incense’ in Sanskrit – the origin of all Indian languages. The reason why this word is appropriate is because it has a very Indian core, and hence the product will retain its Indian roots no matter where in the world it is sold.

The packaging is modular and made of wood. It has a hinged cap, with incense sticks inside along with some flowers to enhance the experience & the scent.

Since people tend to be choosy about smells, there’s a ‘scratch to smell’ tab on the package itself, so that people don’t regret the smell after they’ve brought it.

The attached images are of the rose scented incense sticks. The packaging has instructions of use on the back, along with other regulatory icons & instructions.

The bottom of the packaging is a removable & easily re attachable incense stick stand. Since this stand is absolutely necessary when someone wants to light an incense stick, I have included it in the packaging itself so that customers don’t have to go out and search for it again. The male female joints on the packaging make for simple yet strong & removable attachment of the incense stick stand.

The stand has an anti-flammable coating so that safety hazards are zero (since the packaging is made of wood). The packaging is also very reusable due to it’s material quality & aesthetic appearance.

This packaging completely revamps incense sticks & their packaging as we know it to be, and transforms the experience of using this product.

What’s Unique?
The form and the modular incense stick stand makes the design very unique. Existing incense stick packaging is very badly designed & has none of the features that would improve the experience of use that could exist. This packaging crafts that entire experience while making use very easy & safe. It is reusable & sustainable & extremely unique. Nothing even close to this exists in the incense stick packaging design world.