Designer Sherwood Forlee has came up with a clever solution for those whose lunch is constantly stolen by co-workers, classmates or partners: the Anti-Theft Lunch Bag. How amazing are they? I really want to get a pack. Green splotches that look like mould are printed on both sides of the plastic so anyone who had previously eyed up your sandwiches will think twice when they reach for it. It is such a simple solution when you think of it, repulse the thieves. Forlee was so clever in producing this product, it is so quirky and would attract many. I love the idea but personally I was pretty excited by the packaging for the bags. It is very american, the brown paper bag we are so used to seeing on TV, which american kids and adults alike carry their lunch in. It is such a simple packaging design, a brown paper bag, with simple small black type but it is so attractive.

Designer Steven Haslip won first prize in the D&AD 2007 student awards, with this environmentally friendly design for packaging for online clothing companies. The concept for ‘Hangepak’ came from his own previous experiences with online shopping. He describes the inspiration of this piece on his website by writing; ‘I buy t-shirts online and they always come wrinkled and I always run out of coat-hangers. So I designed a sustainable, reusable way to send and keep your t-shirts. As you open the package you create a coat hanger. The packaging could be made from recycled material whether it is card or plastic and the only waste is the green tear-away tab.’

It is completely ingenious, and in the worrying environmental climate we live in and in a world where people are starting to grow an environmental conscious, it would attract people to buy a certain product if they new doing so would help the environment. I am not too sure how to describe the concept, ‘gimmick’ cheapens the whole design. It is such a simple design, but such a smart design at the same time. It is such a simple solution to the amount of packaging that gets thrown out and with the recession the world is struggling in at the moment, it is nice to know that once you buy the t-shirt you have bought a hanger too. It is also a cheap design to produce, and could be produced in many different materials. I adore design that is interactive and that requires the user to think. This is a beautiful piece of design that would attract attention and actually encourage people to buy a t-shirt just to get the packaging.

The brass knuckle bag design for Clothes In Closets, was the first bag I came across and I was instantly extremely excited about the design. How quirky and different is it? If I saw someone carrying this bag in the street I would go straight to the shop and buy something, anything, just so I too could own one of these bags. It was designed by Leo Burnett Lisbon ad agency. The idea behind the brass knuckles was to apparently protect the garments inside the bag from others, which is quite a humorous design solution. The black against the silver too make it quite sophisticated even with the violent knuckles, it’s urban, street, chic.

This is an extremely smart design for a turkish department store chain; YKM. You do not usually see the strap of a bag being taken into consideration when a bag is being designed, it is usually an after thought and is only ever there for its function, so this is such a beautifully thought out design. It is such a sophisticated design. I love how the user interacts with the design, to provide motion to the photograph of the woman jumping over a jump rope.

This is an extremely clever and humorous design. It instantly catches your eye. It is for a German company; Stop’n Grow is a bag that is primarily for advertising the product and it’s supposed to look like a hand being bitten. I could not find the name of the company whom designed this bag, so if anyone could tell me their name I would greatly appreciate it as I would love to see more of their work.

This is a hard hitting design that would instantly catch your eye as it is such a strange scene to see, especially on the side of a shopping bag. It is for the Red Cross and was designed by Lem advertising agency. It is such a powerful statement and out of all of the bags I looked at, this is the one that hit me the most, in terms of the message that is being portrayed. It is not a shameless attempt at grabbing others attention and pulling money out of purses to spend on pointless items, instead it is a statement of life. It is trying to catch the eye of others and trying to provoke interest and feeling inside of them, to ignite interest in the cause of the red cross to help save lives.

As soon as this popped up on my screen it instantly caught my attention. It is a Panadol Shopping Bag, that is supposed to represent a headache. It looks like the mans hair is being pulled as the subject throws the bag over his back. Again I could not find the master mind behind this design. If anyone knows the designer of this bag please let me know. It is a hilarious design that begs to grab attention, it is so unusual, and extremely quirky, it is interactive design at its finest, incredibly smart and one picture instantly sells the product.