Tip Up

Design: Javed Ali, Mansi Aggarwal, Mitrabinda Behera
Location: India
Project Type: Student Project
School: National Institute of Design
Tutor: Shreya Sarda
Packaging Contents: Matchsticks
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Plastic
Printing Process: Digital printing

One of our aims of our branding course in product design was to come up with an innovative packaging for a product of our choice. Me and my group decided that our product was going to be matchsticks, as we figured that there wasn’t much innovation, or any significant change in the domain of matchsticks, at least here in India. Matchboxes had become something so mundane that no body really paid more attention to it than it required, albeit being an incredibly essential object for lot of households. The only connection the users had with the matchboxes were physical connections, out of necessity and habit. Any sort of emotional connection with the product was non existent.

This realisation is what ignited us. We began with questions like, what if there was a matchbox you would want to collect, what if there was a matchbox that does more than just holding the matchsticks, and most importantly, what If matchboxes weren’t as boring as it is now, that you’d actually want to gift a matchbox to somebody you love. The core intent of the brand we proposed were based on these questions. Tip Up, a matchstick brand that makes fun, interactive, multifunctional packages that up cycles matchboxes into collectible products. And this packaging named “Burn to read” would be one of the series of matchboxes the company Tip Up would be producing. Considering the matchbox to be a product in itself rather than just a packaging, we took inspiration from different sorts of collapsible furnitures, space filling solids, tooth pick dispensers, Pen packagings, construction blocks and various other domains and their functionalities to settle with this final form.

What’s Unique?
We have attempted to rethink matchboxes as a whole, and what makes our matchbox unique is that
– It does not resemble any matchboxes, at all.
– Dispenses matchsticks, with the push of a button
– The label could be peeled of to make various different things, in this case, a bookmark
– The matchbox is multifunctional, you could flip it to turn it into a candle stand, since we realised that lots of people use candles and matchsticks simultaneously, which very often is a cumbersome process.
– You could stack the packaging.
– You could hang the packaging.
– You can fidget with them, gift them, collect them.
– You could even toss them around like a frisbee.