Supermarket savvy

The GSD course “Paper or Plastic: Reinventing Shelf Life in the Supermarket Landscape,” taught by twin brothers Teman and Teran Evans, turns students into strategists who evaluate household brands and then redesign them from the ground up. 

The Brooklyn-bred Evans brothers have been lifelong collaborators. Both attended the Graduate School of Design before launching careers in design, marketing, and branding. They’ve been teaching “Paper or Plastic” at the Graduate School of Design for 14 years.

The students who took the course this past fall selected from brands that had been divested, or sold by their parent firm after the firm determined that the brand was no longer successful. The goal? Revival. “Someone else has purchased [the brand] because they see potential for it to perform,” according to Teman. It’s up to the students to tap into that potential.

The class was divided into four teams, with between nine and 11 students per team: Clean & Clear, Kleenex, Popsicle, and Yoplait. Before jumping into design and fabrication, each team went through an extensive process of market research, trying to identify new target audiences with distinct wants and needs. With that information in hand, each team redesigned its products with those consumers in mind.

At the end of the semester, the teams pitched to a group of design professionals recruited from the Evans’ contacts, who evaluated not only the finished product but every aspect of their presentations, from the design of slides to flow and interaction among presenters.

Teman hopes that his students can share their newly gained wisdom after they graduate. “We want them to pay it forward. Who are they now going to go inspire and mentor and take what they’ve learned and introduce the next innovation, the next business, the next disruption. That’s exciting for us.”