Karan Gautam – Nicotine Gums Packaging Design

When we talk about quitting smoking, it’s a very difficult process that requires a lot of efforts, guidance, support and most importantly will power. A lot of smokers volunteer to actually quit smoking and a lot of them actually resume it after quitting. There’s a very less population of people who have successfully quit smoking forever. Now the main area of my concern was, what makes smokers to not quit smoking or to get back to it?
And as I researched and inquired about it, I came to know that there are triggers that induce the wish to smoke, in people. And these triggers are very common and appear within our everyday surroundings.

For example, craving the taste of a cigarette, smelling cigarette smoke, handling cigarettes/lighters/matches, seeing people around smoking, LOOKING AT CIGARETTE STACKS AT SHOPS AND EATERIES AROUND etc. These triggers are experienced at a daily basis. There have been steps taken to aware or ensure that people don’t smoke, like writing SMOKING IS INJURIOUS TO HEALTH AND MAY CAUSE CANCER on cigarette packs, and ADVERTISEMENTS and all.

But do they really work? And if they do, then till what extent? Now the question/thought that provoked me to work in this direction was, if these these things trigger the brain to smoke, then why cannot certain things trigger the brain not to? So I came across these nicotine gums that claim to help people quit smoking. But how do people believe it? What about these nicotine gums do convince them? How should they approach them? Do these nicotine gums really hit their brains in the right way?

Thinking about these questions I came up with the idea to redesign the nicotine gums packaging in a way that it hits smokers right in the eyes, trigger them to not smoke, motivate them or say or make them feel in a particular positive way.

What’s Unique?
The form of the nicotine gums box is similar/identical to a cigarette box but has a difference too. Instead of containing cigarettes, it contains the opposite/solution/help i.e. the nicotine gums. This was the idea behind making the lower body transparent. Usually these nicotine gum packs are very unappealing to look and contain a lot of disorganized information on them. So I took steps towards making the packaging more clean, attractive, minimal and friendly. This whole idea of putting nicotine gums in cigarette box lookalike form conveys a message, it creates an important irony that speaks for itself. Also the lid that dispenses the gums has been designed in a way that only one gum comes out at a time. So now when people(smokers) see these boxes stacked up at the shops, it will induce a thought of choice/questions in their minds about quitting to smoke.