Miniature Zen Garden Kit

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When I was a little kid, our family had the privilege to live near a beach in Korea. Instead of playing with dolls, I would run around the beach, playing with sand and pebbles, and annoy the crabs and bugs on the beach. Playing on the beach was my favorite activity as a child.

The objective of this project was to create a packaging for a toy that I played with as a child. After days of thinking which toy I would choose, I chose a miniature zen garden kit because the content of the kit is the closest to the "toys" that I used to play with: sand and pebbles.

The problems I noticed on the pre-existing packaging for miniature zen garden kits: they do not provoke the zen feeling; and they utilize plastic packaging, which goes against the whole teaching of zen and its advocacy for a harmonious relationship with nature. To solve these problems, I created an eco-friendly packaging solution to better communicate the teaching of zen, which is about peace and meditation. The box was created in wood, and the wrapping was created in a special textured paper. I used minimalistic, isometric illustration for the content and instruction on how to use the zen garden kit. That way, the kit could communicate its content and the instructions with less visual noise.