It's been well over two months since SadaPay's numberless debit cards have started to roll out in their good looking jackets, but I still can't get over them. Why? Maybe because A) it perfectly fits our vertical debit cards, and B) I, OQ, designed the sleeve. 🤟🏼
Although the ultimate brief and goal was to create something that tells our brand story whilst staying on-brand (which we happened to nail, thanks to my partner in crime – Asad Amjad), but at the same time, my personal motivation was to design it in a manner which not only communicates in a sada tone of voice, but also allows our users to have a skater-smooth unboxing experience – because as per Walter Isaacson from Apple, "Packaging can be theatre, it can create a story!" ⛸️ And that's exactly what we have achieved with our slider packaging; we have had beta-testers like Fasieh Mehta – Senior Business Operations Manager @ EpicGames create epic unboxing content & share exciting reviews on socials. 🔥
But oh boy, it certainly wasn't easy to come up with what's out there on the shelves right now. It took team #creative – Brandon Timinsky, Omer Salimullah, Asad Amjad & myself well over 3 months to finalise the packaging; not because we had other fire to put out back then, but primarily because our debit cards & their jackets are the only two collaterals that pave way to have a tangible connection with the users (cus we a neo-bank, you know that, right?) 💳. So we just had to get it right, no matter how much time it took.
Although the ultimate brief and goal was to create something that tells our brand story whilst staying on-brand (which we happened to nail, thanks to my partner in crime – Asad Amjad), but at the same time, my personal motivation was to design it in a manner which not only communicates in a sada tone of voice, but also allows our users to have a skater-smooth unboxing experience – because as per Walter Isaacson from Apple, "Packaging can be theatre, it can create a story!" ⛸️ And that's exactly what we have achieved with our slider packaging; we have had beta-testers like Fasieh Mehta – Senior Business Operations Manager @ EpicGames create epic unboxing content & share exciting reviews on socials. 🔥
But oh boy, it certainly wasn't easy to come up with what's out there on the shelves right now. It took team #creative – Brandon Timinsky, Omer Salimullah, Asad Amjad & myself well over 3 months to finalise the packaging; not because we had other fire to put out back then, but primarily because our debit cards & their jackets are the only two collaterals that pave way to have a tangible connection with the users (cus we a neo-bank, you know that, right?) 💳. So we just had to get it right, no matter how much time it took.
Initial Drafts
So we did countless designs. iterations. revisions. styles 😂. Just like every other brand does – with their product. But here's the fun part: none of us, I repeat, none of us got bored of it. We thoroughly enjoyed discussing each and every single design variant I put together, on hour long zoom calls. Will kid y'all not if I say it was an incredibly BEAUTIFUL part of our brand building journey. ❤️
Here's my personal favourite from the first lot of designs.
It's based on a space/astro theme because we initially thought of calling ourselves as well as our fans aka the wider community – Sadanauts. Sounds cool. Explains how we're true believers of building something which is out of this world. 🌎Plus, since our card's colour is teal, right? (which, by the way, is one of the two primary colours of the brand), so I wanted it to stand out in the packaging. Hence, magnificent blue (our brand's only secondary colour). 🔵But then we unanimously decided to do another one which lets the card take the spotlight, and keep this one for later, maybe. So we moved on. 🤙🏽
So we did countless designs. iterations. revisions. styles 😂. Just like every other brand does – with their product. But here's the fun part: none of us, I repeat, none of us got bored of it. We thoroughly enjoyed discussing each and every single design variant I put together, on hour long zoom calls. Will kid y'all not if I say it was an incredibly BEAUTIFUL part of our brand building journey. ❤️
Here's my personal favourite from the first lot of designs.
It's based on a space/astro theme because we initially thought of calling ourselves as well as our fans aka the wider community – Sadanauts. Sounds cool. Explains how we're true believers of building something which is out of this world. 🌎Plus, since our card's colour is teal, right? (which, by the way, is one of the two primary colours of the brand), so I wanted it to stand out in the packaging. Hence, magnificent blue (our brand's only secondary colour). 🔵But then we unanimously decided to do another one which lets the card take the spotlight, and keep this one for later, maybe. So we moved on. 🤙🏽
Astro-themed Packaging
Then we did another one. This time around, I think, we somewhat knew what we wanted. Just a little decent something that serves the purpose, and, of course, looks distinctive from what's already out there. So I started from scratch. A blank canvas with keylines on 20% opacity, on AI. And brought in our signature marble texture which had already made its debut on our socials, and masked it. 🤺Then came in our racetrack (the four lined track on the bottom slider). 🏎️ And then the uber-cool copy with thin-stroked celebratory elements.
Hmm. The final piece started to look like ours. Like an on-brand design. But then since we were all high on experimentation, we decided to do a couple more whilst keeping the direction intact.
A sweet mix of illustrations and type-based packaging.
Thereafter about few reiterations, we got our packaging right! 🤑 We retained the racetrack, but moved it around on the basis of Z-pattern rule – on both top and bottom slider panels, and got rid of the thin-stroked elements because it seemed like a print-risk to me. 🙃 Oh, and I also remember redoing & realigning the icons on the back of the slider; felt like matching the stroke strength with that of the racetrack on the front.
And voila! SadaPay's Official Card Packaging was rendered for the last time, zipped, and sent to our printers across the border via WeTransfer. ❤️
And voila! SadaPay's Official Card Packaging was rendered for the last time, zipped, and sent to our printers across the border via WeTransfer. ❤️
Who knew an emoji react by OS would take us this far | July, 2020
Here's how the final version looks like. 😍
Then about 3 months later, SadaPay's numberless cards started to roll out in marble-textured jackets, and like I said up there, I still can't get over them. 😅
Like BT said, killed it. 💯
Thank you!