QMAG

About

QMAG has established a strong reputation for providing the global refractory, hydrometallurgical and agricultural industries with premium-quality magnesia (magnesium oxide [MgO]) products. They approached me needing their range of EMAG magnesium products re-designed, from a standard brown bag to something with more shelf appeal.

Our challenge was to transform the packaging to appeal to a variety of audiences from Australian farmers, through to industrial chemists and white-collar procurement managers. Customers buy EMAG for its performance and technical properties rather than shelf-appeal but it is important the product is easily distinguishable as EMAG. The second challenge was to ensure each variety was easy to distinguish on the shelf, not only by colour but by a graphic system, along with needing to remain a 2 colour design to keep printing costs down.

Deliverables

Packaging

Qmag Packaging Design MG
Qmag Packaging Design M
Qmag Packaging Design MG

I began with researching Magnesium and it’s structure. We knew the magnesium structure had legs to create a strong concept, looking further into the crystal structure shape and researching everything Magnesium.

A core part of packaging design is creating a memorbale brand experience, after discovering the Magnesium crystal structure was hexagonal, we realised we could utilise the M in QMAG & EMAG to begin creating a unique, purposeful design system for the packaging.

I also explored the product and what sets each product apart from one another, there were 4 magnesium types that needed to be easily differentiated on the shelves. After discussions with QMAG, it was obvious the size of the magnesium was a key differentiator so I explored this further to develop the concepts.

Before After

The re-design was for a suite of products, easy to identify on the shelves. The challenge was that each variety could be distinguished, not only by colour but by another distinguishable feature. We developed colours for each variety based on QMAG’s corporate colour palette, and using large numbers and varying patterns we were able to create 4 easily distinguishable products.

QMag Emag packaging redesign patterns
QMag Emag packaging redesign patterns
QMag Emag packaging redesign patterns
QMag Emag packaging redesign
QMag Emag packaging redesign patterns
QMag Emag packaging redesign
QMag Emag packaging redesign patterns
QMag Emag packaging redesign

The team loved the packaging concept and we’re all good to move through to refining the full design and the MD likes the concept so much he wants to look at options to roll-out the design to promotional packaging.

— Letecia Allen, Marketing Manager at QMAG