Can Annoying Packaging Make Smokers Quit?

[shikharkamat]

Screw Nicorette. RISD ID grad Erik Askin has a better idea to help smokers kick the habit: Make cigarette packaging so irritating, you have no choice but to quit.

As things stand, cigarettes are too well-designed, Askin says, and he’s right. The standard hard pack flip-top makes it easy to grab smokes, share them with the requisite “I-only-smoke-when-I-drink” mooch, and store them in small places: a pocket, the cuff of your T-shirt -- wherever. Even soft packs have design cred. Industrial design kingpin Raymond Loewy whomped up the iconic Lucky Strike packs back in 1940, and dorks in pompadours and peg-leg jeans have been smoking them ever since. For too long, cigarette companies used good design for evil. Now, Askin says, it’s time to use bad design for good.

[shikharkamat]

Ergo, he turned a rectangular pack into a thoroughly inconvenient diamond. Called Design to Annoy, the thing is so wide and the angling so severe, it’s impossible to grip without looking like a fumbling doofus. Bumming becomes an awkward collision of fingers -- a social exchange best avoided at all possible costs. And don’t even try to stuff the pack in your back pocket. Chances are, it’ll fall out and if it doesn’t, well, that sucks for you, too, ‘cause you’ll probably look like you’ve got a big load of coal in your pants. You CANNOT win.

[shikharkamat]

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[shikharkamat]

Production and branding also get trickier--that is, less effective and efficient for the maker. For example, the shape makes the label practically invisible in a vending machine:

[shikharkamat]

Askin’s idea is obviously a provocation, and he’s the first to admit that it would be “tough to implement.” Not that you should write it off entirely as the idle musings of a clever young designer. Cigarette companies already have to plaster morbid health warnings on cigarette packs. Why not morbidly bad packaging? Robbing cigarettes of their efficiency is a matter of public health.

Naturally, Design to Annoy got us thinking about other products you could rejigger to anger people into chucking their bad habits: a beer can, whose stay tab breaks off before you pop it open; a mug that spills coffee down your shirt; a chastity belt for your refrigerator; a roulette wheel that never, ever lands on your number. Oh, wait, for some of us that actually exists! The possibilities are practically endless. Designers: Hop to it.

Suzanne Labarre
FastCoDesign

[vikas]

interesting thought. Another way could be to keep a small soap piece in your cigarette pack. Cigarettes are hygroscopic. They absorb the soapy smell. Soon you will quit

[samrohi]

'Cigarette Cases' to the rescue ...

[basant kumar]

but the question is, was this tested with smokers? and why would marlboro make this?

[shikharkamat]

No the idea is that you dont give Marlboro a choice. Instead of forcing Cigarette companies to have a graphic picture of diseased lungs on their packets, the govt should impose This kind of packaging. This way they dont get a choice and they Have to bear a much larger cost of production.

[Allen Mathews]

do you have any idea whether this was just a concept or executed? Any idea of response?

[basant kumar]

Its a nice design study. if it were not for a design study, a lot of argument om,es to mind, but I accept this as a design study in itself

[JCSaiKrishna]

1. why dont we the increase the price of cigarettes? (triple), doesnt it help people?
2. decrease the number of cigarettes in a pack as chain smokers always buy in packets.
3. Implementing no-smoking-in-public rule strict, I see people people flicking their cigars frm the car windows or from the back seat of autos or even from bike which would be dangerous to the people driving/riding behind them.
4. advertising like 'do not drink and drive'

wat say?

[Hasmukh]

excellent ideas. I like the idea of increasing the price, as that will get higher revenues. But I dont think any cigarette manufacturer will ever opt for this. They are not the ones who want to curtail smoking. Perhaps teh government has to step in...

[shikharkamat]

@ Allen Matthews

No this was just a Design Project that he did.

As far as i go, I love the idea of executing THIS to make ppl quit

[vasanth]

The ideal thing to do would be increase the price of smokes and then use the additional income to subsidize the fuel rates!