VIRTUAL Prague Research & Teaching Conference

Abstract

With the advent of AI and its prospective widespread use, the core of design education transforms from teaching the students the hard skills like drawing or modelling to amplifying the role of critical thinking. Just like every other field touched by the Generative AI technology, concerns arise on the future of the profession and a paradigm shift is crucial. As part of our Visual Communication Design curriculum, in the Graphic Design studio course a packaging design project with a twist was assigned to the students: Designing cigarette packs employing all the skills that they have accumulated thus far to work on strategies and prototypes that DO NOT SELL, or in other words, a “counter packaging” project. In an era when tobacco companies are required to use plain packaging of cigarettes and disturbing graphic images on the boxes, the audience has become less responsive to this anti-selling strategy which focuses on the long-term health effects of smoking through the exposure of the buyers to prescriptive messages. As packaging remains one of the most visible and functional visual communication design tools to sell (or not to sell) a product, this dead-end attempt of plain packaging was deviced to open up new pathways for the design students to question the current methods suggested by health authorities and to propose new insights. In this paper the selected student works are discussed and analysed through their attempts at innovative packaging design for cigarettes and their questioning of the ethical role design assumes in this industry. The learning outcomes were achieved surprisingly well, as the students struggled to adhere to basic design principles, yet deployed them for the counter objectives instead of making the product attractive for potential buyers.