A picture was taken of an employee at a box printing machine company holding The New iPhone and posted by a Dutch blog. This picture reveals some interesting changes from the previous phones. The screens will be longer, going from 3.5” to 4”. This space allows for an additional row of apps. A thinner design is also reported for the iPhone 5. The ports are also becoming smaller than the current larger dock. When it comes to the box design, it will say The New iPhone, instead of iPhone 5 like previous boxes. This new iPhone is set to launch September 12th.
Anticipation, impatience, and excitement are just some of the emotions that Apple wants its customers to feel as they are about to open their brand new Apple product. Many of us know that the packaging that holds our new product is great, but what many of us do not know is how serious Apple is about keeping its packaging a secret by lock and key.
Apple clearly cares about creative, well-designed packaging, and with each new product there are countless details that make the packaging special and unique. Every Apple device comes in an elegant, simple-to-open box that makes us feel as though we are ruining a masterpiece by tugging it apart. The experience in opening an Apple product is unlike any other experience, which is exactly the feeling that Apple wants.
This, and other inside details of Apple were recently revealed in an advanced copy of Adam Lashinsky’s book, Inside Apple.
The book offers wonderful insights into why the packaging of an Apple products is so good. In fact, Apple has a secret room that is accessible only by security badges that is dedicated to hundreds of different kinds of prototype product packaging options for Apple products such as the iPad.
“To fully grasp how seriously Apple executives sweat the small stuff, consider this: For months, a packaging designer was holed up in this room performing the most mundane of tasks – opening boxes,” NetworkWorld’s iOnApple blog quoted from Lashinsky’s book.
In order to get their boxes to be so emotive, Lashinsky explains
“One after another, the designer created and tested an endless series of arrows, colours, and tapes for a tiny tab designed to show the consumer where to pull back the invisible, full-bleed sticker adhered to the top of the clear iPod box. Getting it just right was this particular designer’s obsession.”
Apparently, packaging designers open every prototype box to test the positioning of the invisible stickers stuck to the top of iPod boxes. Lashinsky explained that the invisible tape must be placed exactly every time.
Late co-founder, Steve Jobs, who passed away in late 2011, took packaging very seriously because he wanted Apple customers to have the complete experience with the product and wanted customers to feel a certain emotion upon opening Apple products to add to the Apple mystique.
Unlike other technology companies, Apple’s package design have sophisticated utilization of white space. MacRumors quotes Jonathan Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of industrial design, from Walter Isaacson’s bio on Steve Jobs: “You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.”
Be sure to check out this video courtesy of Mashable:
