HOTBOX
Smart frozen meals packaging for those living smart.
It's no more difficult nowadays to have a quick lunch with no time spent cooking, even if you are specific about what you eat and what you don't. But when it comes to having a long-term quick solution for not only you but a big family or a group of your employees at the office – the task is not that easy.

'HOTBOX' is a frozen meal product line with smart packaging in mind. Rectangular boxes are taking more useful space in the freezer and can be easily stacked on top of each other. Soups, main courses, and desserts are all different sizes, but this modular system is on your side for that easy stacking. Main contents info is tagged on the lid for quick visual communication and the edges are coded with the main ingredient color, so that in case you are no-meat-guy, pink and green are the hot meals you will look for, or if you are allergic to nuts – don't go green in desserts. Best of all, you can microwave right in the package – just tear the plastic wrap under the lid, follow the instructions you see on it and enjoy your lunch.

Software used: Ai, Ps, Lr, Blender
LET'S KICK SOME ICE!
Mr. Freeze by Arnold Schwarzenegger from 1997 'Batman & Robin'. Damn cool movie.

shockingly useful
Even though first frozen products faced big difficulties in their demand in 1920's (since freezers were not a common thing to have at home at that time), it's just totally different story now. Today we have a chance to enjoy almost any meal we can imagine with long-term storage at our side and no extra cooking hassle — thanks to the shock-freezing technology.
My main goal for this project was to develop a packaging solution for ready frozen meals — and make it as smart and convenient as possible. You don't always have time or a full kitchen to cook your meal, or maybe you just don't wanna clean those dishes after preparing your lunch. From office teams to construction site workers or just big families with today's rapid lifestyle — we all need some quick and easy refill during the day.

You got a freezer and a microwave? That's all you need to keep going.


are you high?
Though I totally like how 'to make a deep dive' sounds in terms of researching something new (and, in fact, love actually doing so) — biggest inspiration for this project came from somewhere above. When space use is a golden level priority, there are some great professionals out there, who knows a thing or two about efficient food storage in particular. And oh boy they are high.
Casserole — a beautiful French word which means "a pot of heat resistant material" — is mostly known to the public simply as a "plane-food-container". While they are also pretty popular on long train rides and sometimes are seen at school cafeterias, their main mission is to keep some pre-made meals for several hours before being served right in the box.

Apart from combining the storage and the serving, which solves one of the initial challenges for our smart frozen meals, they are also stackable. This packaging solution is just as good as more permanent boxes and containers, allowing to place one box on top of another — simple and effective. But what is even more fascinating is... shape?


I first wanted to ask so that you would imagine you had two boxes, but after hearing my own words — that sounded too geeky and wonk. Let's do this instead.

– Hey, geometry, how more area does a square take compared to a same width circle?
– Approximately 27% more.
– Thank you, geometry.

Yup. More than a quarter more space can be used by going square instead of circle. And with how precious is every cubic inch of space on a plane — those guys definitely know some geometry.
You would be totally right to say that we can stack circles staggered, but even in that case — we will be still having gaps between the boxes. Sure, they will be smaller (making it about 10-11% instead of 27%), but there's a greater chance of not-a-perfect-fit when filling the space with an integer number of boxes. And we can get into even more trouble of space efficiency.


let's go sustainable
Paper cup, no gloss finish, ready to microwave.

up the volume
Starting 3D in Blender.

Visual coding
Sizes, colors and icons.

GET STRONG you coolers
Rendering final.
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