Impact Fact Labelling System

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CLIENT: Class Project for Grad Seminar

CHALLENGE: We had an assignment for Grad Seminar to find a problem or need in our society and come up with a solution for it. For my project, I decided to design a new labeling system for food and beverage packaging.I wanted the new labels to combine the nutrition fact data that is currently on food packaging and add something new: environmental impact facts. This is an important issue to focus on because food production is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and while everyone knows the difference between a Hummer and a Hybrid, most people don’t know the difference between bacon and beans. I used all real data for this project, and while the numbers aren’t precisely accurate, they are pretty close.

DESIGN STRATEGY: For the nutrition facts, I wanted the information to be easier to scan quickly, so I added bar graphs that represent the percentages of daily allowance. I also made a schematic drawing of the serving size for each product because it is hard to picture in your head what 30g of something would actually look like.For the environmental data, I wanted the information to help people make decisions of what foods to buy if they care about reducing their carbon footprint. Instead of showing just the raw amounts of oil used, carbon dioxide emitted, etc., I developed a color-coded scale from green to red that represents the spectrum of impact. It is easy for consumers to immediately understand the relative environmental-friendliness of each given product.I chose a variety of staple foods to focus on because the impact varies so much between animal products and vegetable products, and I wanted to highlight that. I think that the heavy impact of some foods will surprise people.