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Binti is a multi-award winning charity providing menstrual products to girls and women in the UK, India, US, Nairobi and Africa. Binti were looking for a packaging design agency in London to help them conceptualise and create a brand of reusble menstral pads for the UK market. We accepted the challenge and the pro-bono project.
Client: Binti Period
Deliverables: Branding, graphic design, illustration, strategic definition, packaging design, copywriting.
Creatives: Siena Dexter – Creative Direction & strategy/ Olivia Goodenough– Graphic Design, illustration
year: 2019
The purpose of the product was two-fold: first, to raise money for Binti’s non-profit projects. We also wanted to educate the category and actively work to reduce the tonnes of plastic wasted every year through disposable period products.
Our brief was to create a brand and packaging design for Binti’s ‘sanitary’ pads, but we saw an opportunity to redefine an exclusive category reliant on stereotypically ‘feminine’ design cues and messaging while updating perception of cloth pads – a product used pre-disposables for a new generation of eco-conscious shoppers.
Our category research showed that 15-24 year olds are most likely to use reusables, that only 5% of women in the UK currently use reusable products, and that the category boasted little consumer loyalty overall, with the main driver to purchase being price both premium and value brands were female shopper biased. We set out to create a brand that’s gender-inclusive – after all not all those who menstruated are women, and not all women menstruate. Our mission was to create a brand that shows the reality of menstruation, in-line with Binti’s mission of educating girls and women
Terminology around menstrual products holds negative connotations. Language like “feminine hygiene” and “sanitary” pads reinforce antiquated attitudes surrounding the “uncleanliness” of menstruation. Instead of calling our pads “sanitary”, we prefer the term ‘menstrual wear’ – with a nod to the reusable nature of the product and without shying away from the fact that this is a product for menstruation. The idea of cycles was central to our concept; the menstrual cycle, the cycles of generations, and the recycling of materials we use. The tagline ‘for future cycles’ emerged as a natural guide to our messaging, while our visual expression illustrates the idea of cycles with a clean, two-tone split of crimson red and light blue – a drop of blood connecting the two ‘phases’, much like our menstrual cycle connects the very separate phases of ‘bleeding’ and ‘not bleeding’.
For the logo, we used a simple, clear geometric typeface which nods to the ‘future’ element of the brand without leaning too far towards impersonal or clinical.
Cloth pads are not a new invention of our generation, but the premium positioning of disposables has made reusables fall out of fashion, giving way to blue liquid and secret periods no one needs to know about. We hope that through education and clear, transparent messaging, we can move towards lifting the period taboo, while positioning reusables as the product of the future and cutting down on pointless plastic waste. We hope that our very special partnership with Binti Period will pave the way to more responsible, conscious future cycles.
