From Core to Casing

Each category opened with its own mind map, because the three uses share a subject but not a design space. The functional map covered materials - ceramic, glass, metal - clean and playful geometry, white and childlike color, whether the holder should also carry the salt, the spoon or the discarded shells, how it sits beside a mug of coffee or juice, whether it is easy to wash, and a branch on imitation: natural phenomena such as a falling water drop, and lighting fixtures, down to the idea of replacing a bulb with an egg. The aesthetic map asked whether the form should copy the egg's shape, deliberately avoid touching it, or absorb the egg into its own geometry, and whether the geometry exists to support the egg or to present it. The packaging map worked from the rules outward - safe transport, good appearance, low cost, ease of use, protection from foreign odours and quality loss - alongside the legal requirements that the package be dry, clean, impact-resistant and made of materials that shield the product, then moved to shape, opening mechanism, and the single question of whether the customer should be able to see the egg at all. Form finding ran on two tracks in parallel: 2D sketching on paper, organized into four numbered Paths of A3 sheets per category, and 3D parametric modelling in Blender, where Voronoi shells, low-poly faceted holders and cloth and ripple simulations of a droplet impact were generated and compared as geometry rather than as drawings. Each category was then finished in the tool that suited its output: Fusion 360 for the functional holder, where a parametric solid and dimensioned drawings were needed; Blender for the creative form, where the geometry itself was the deliverable; and Affinity Designer 2 for the packaging, where the work is dielines and print artwork. The functional holder took the imitation branch literally. It reads as a desk lamp with the egg standing in for the bulb - a cantilevered arm rises from a 130 mm disc base and swings the cup out over it, so the egg is presented at an angle instead of sitting upright. The finished holder is 205 mm tall, the cup measures 130 mm across with a 90 mm opening and a 60.82 mm lip, and the whole form balances on the disc. The creative form answered the question of how geometry relates to the egg by making the holder a larger copy of the egg's own casing: a cracked shell, opened along a jagged break, seated on a stepped plinth. The packaging resolved into a box within a box - an outer carton, an inner base, and a platform insert that seats the egg and keeps it from moving - with the crack motif carried across the artwork as a zigzag horizon line, and the nutrition declaration, barcode and grading marks laid out on the flat before folding. All three were prototyped at 1:1: the holder and the creative form were 3D printed in red PLA, and the packaging was printed on 300 gsm paper, then cut and folded by hand.