I had been waiting for the Eureka moment in this project…Not panicing honestly.

At this point in the project I was just breaking up for the easter holidays and far from happy with my product. I was a bit concerned that i wasnt going to reach a project product conclusion.

There was a day between this awful tray prototype

And the plates and spoon on my previous blog .

I think it was the trip to parkside flxibles and chatting to the team, adding design parameters and working and thinking  as part of a team that took the pressure off an allowed me to think.

Also Stuart my bestie was hanging-out at my studio and working through the design problems with me.

Stuart had suggested masking the mould with cling film, this use of materials to allowed release of the tray mould, this idea did work but left a pattern in the mould. The tray givene by Parkside flexibles, origanaly to make a cast mould from, has a sheen and like cling film would release the IAM matterial. I descided to have a go at using  the tray directly as mold.

The images below illustrate the use of four varying mixtures of the IAM fuel mix – no food colour –

I was working on the plate models at the same time.

The conclusion for all these prototypes was to next prototype splitting the material into a coffee polymer and a hemp and coffee mixture.

This was to create a shiny inner to the tray, consumers want this high shine clean look next to their food. I wanted to keep the outer rustic look to make the product standout from other products.

The tray IAM fuel is designed for the primary use of packaging, with the secondary use of fuel, no other packaging has a secondary use as fuel, so it’s important the packaging communicates I AM Fuel I AM DIFFRENT, challenging behaviour.

The name IAM is chosen to make people look twice, on testing most people read it as Ian then look back and question.

Also I want to give my product a personality, a brand.