Boudin won a Student Runner Up Visual Communication Award in the 2019 Core77 Design Awards.
Boudin, a bakery and restaurant chain based in San Francisco, is famous for its sourdough bread and its "Bowl of Soup," which is a hollowed out sourdough "bowl" with clam chowder in it. It's an inspiringly self-contained, fully edible culinary design. It only makes sense, then, for the brand to follow in its own zero-waste footsteps with the rest of its food packaging.
A result of ArtCenter College's first-ever plastic-free packaging course, designer Yi Mao proposed a rebranding of Boudin's packaging and visual identity that shifted the company toward sustainability and, as Mao deemed it, "the 21st century vibe."
Boudin SF new to-go packaging container - 
Core packaging containers for sourdough bread and clam chowder - 
Enter a caption (optional)Mao's presentation included physical food packaging (the models dictated the size, dimensions, and functionality of real paper pulp containers); reusable cotton carrier bags; and environmentally friendly wrapping papers, container tags, to-go menus, and business cards.
To produce the models, Mao employed a comprehensive range of compostable biomaterials: algae, food waste, grass, mushrooms, plant cellulose and wood pulp.
To-go packaging tag - 
New branding identity - 
Enter a caption (optional)The sustainability aspect was only one of the guiding ethos for the project; the other was modernization. "Cleaner typography and more illustrative graphic elements" as parts of a comprehensive visual system would transform Boudin 'into a brand with a strong contemporary style'," says Mao of the proposal. This restyling incorporated San Francisco's history, as well as the bakery's— Boudin has been a California institution since 1849.
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Boudin SF food delivery packaging family - Deeming the concept "Boudin Yuccies" (which stands for Young Urban Creatives), Mao's pairing of heritage with the crucial element of ecological-mindedness aims to bring the brand's stature as an iconic San Francisco tourist attraction into a new era, one that fuses with Silicon Valley's philosophical and aesthetic direction.
Sounds like a fully baked concept to us.
Environmental design elements - 
Recognizing excellence in all areas of design enterprise, the Core77 Design Awards celebrates the richness of the design profession and its practitioners.
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This Bay Area Packaging Designer Paired Silicon Valley Vibes with a Zero-Waste Ethos
great concept. One big issue is with it's stack-ability, which looks like it doesn't. This effects production capabilities with tooling, shipping issue (palletization), and storage issue in the actual restaurants. Real-world application is a key consideration that is not really taught in schools unfortunately.