Thinkcage

Hi. I'm Jason Zimdars a web designer in Oklahoma City, OK and this is my website.

Brilliant Packaging

Sometimes the very best ideas are so natural they don’t seem like ideas at all. That is, they seem so obvious, that it makes you wonder why the idea hasn’t always existed or how we got so far away from it. Such is the case with this laptop, the HP Pavilion dv6929wm Entertainment Notebook PC which ships and sits on retail shelves inside a laptop bag. Not a cardboard box, tons of styrofoam, baggies, and twist-ties, but actually the computer and all of its accessories are inside a laptop bag designed for the dual purpose. And the bag is made of recycled materials, too.

The product was created by HP as an answer to Walmart’s design challenge, challenge which asked electronics manufacturers to produce a product that would reduce environmental impact. HP’s solution won the top prize in reducing 97% of the typical waste from laptop packaging. It really is a shame that more products don’t ship in similar “packages”. How many things, especially electronics, do we buy and then buy a bag, cover, or other protection for? I’d love to see this trickle into other products. When did we become a nation that needs everything we buy to hermetically sealed?

3 Responses to “Brilliant Packaging”

  1. Doug Says:

    This is totally brilliant. Packaging is a big part of what makes a brand different and HP has done a wonderful job here. Makes you wonder why the iPod doesn’t come this way, too.

  2. Thinkcage » Blog Archive » Ten Things 37signals learned… Says:

    [...] ideas about business are fresh and almost too obvious (as I believe the best ideas are). His thoughts about how to run a business, productivity, and creativity are often at the front of [...]

  3. JZ Says:

    Yeah, iPods have a way to go. But Apple did make some big packaging reductions on the new laptops announced a week or two ago. Still nothing as spare as this.