O design estratégico na representação da sustentabilidade das embalagens Natura Ekos

Abstract

The packaging is a media device that serves as a channel of message transmission for different social strata in daily life and can contribute for the learning of a more sustainable consumption culture, intensifying through design their various purposes, among them: contain, protect and identify the product. Considering the communicational aspects of the packaging, it is understood that it is integrated into a product’s identity and it influences in the individuals’ purchase decision. The designer can strategically explore the symbolic meanings to the development of graphic representations both in informational level as in the symbolic level. As a general objective of this work, it is sought to investigate how Strategic Design may potentiate the effects of meaning from the perceptions about the sustainability of the packaging of the Natura Ekos products. For this, it is established as specific objectives: a) investigate and discuss the Strategic Design from the sustainability perspective; b) explicit the design strategies issued by Natura on the packaging of Natura Ekos line of products; c) analyze the cosmetic packaging of Natura Ekos chestnut and buriti from the signification theory based on Barthes and Bourdieu; d) propose project guidelines to the development of sustainable packaging that enhance the effects of meaning. As a method, using exploratory research, it is investigated the individuals’ perceptions based in the focus groups of users of Natura Ekos products, non-users of Natura Ekos products, designers, and experts in environmental and social area. As results, it is presented the perceptions that were stratified from the focus groups’ participants based in the signification theory and in the Strategic Design, operating in the complexity of sustainability representations in the packaging, in the metalinguistic level as integration point between the metaproject, sustainability and signification. From research results, it is pointed five project guidelines for creating product-service systems to enhance the sense effects of graphic representations that relate to sustainability: 1) creating the sustainability; 2) generating the sustainability strategies; 3) recognizing the information; 4) recognizing the materials; 5) rethinking design forms.