Above: bottle design by Jacinta Sobey

The Wonder Drug: Project by Jacinta Sobey

The wonder drug is the name of my campaign to sell bottled reclaimed and desalinated water to the public. Not only does the campaign aim to raise awareness about the reality of the water shortage, it is an advertisement for a small publication full of information on water.


The publication informs the reader on the benefits of drinking water and it’s healing power – hence the name The Wonder Drug.

With plastic water bottles releasing harmful chemicals into water such as: Bisphenol A. I chose to bottle my water in glass bottles, because they are safe to reuse and can still be recycled. 
Bisphenol A should be avoided as it can stimulate hormone growth in humans, potentially assisting to set off hormone-stimulated cancers. Bisphenol A is released from PET bottles when they are used more than once, or are heated i.e in the car or in the sun.

I have made the bottles from glass, which has been sandblasted, leaving the logo as regular glass, so it stands out and the label can be seen through the logo, giving it colour.

I hope that these bottles inform the local community about the dangers of drinking from PET bottles, as well as the environmental consequences of disposing PET bottles. Under the cap of each bottle is a fact that the consumer may not have known previously, allowing them to make a more informed decision about purchasing water in PET bottles. The messages include: "It takes 3L of water to make a PET bottle" and "only 1 of every 10 PET bottles sold gets recycled".

The wonder drug bottle is designed to take on the aesthetic of a pharmaceutical capsule, sending the message that drinking enough water is important to look after your health.

Contact

About Message in a bottle

Third year Communication Design Students at Monash University were encouraged to participate in the Aspen Design Challenge 'Designing Water's Future' by responding to the environmental issue of buying drinking water in plastic bottles. The Message in a Bottle required students to develop a campaign to discourage the use of bottled water through the sale of bottled water. The ironical message would imply that this is the last bottle of water you will buy.

Students were asked to design and brand water bottles for desalinated water and for reclaimed water (recycled sewage) so as to highlight the urgency of the issue. The water bottle was also designed to promote the sale of the ultimate resource book on water. This "Aquapedia" would be the definitive book on water and could be purchased on line.

Project leader

Russell Kennedy, Senior Lecturer, Visual Communication,
Monash University, Faculty of Art & Design

Links

Water Project website
INDEX: | AIGA Aspen Design Challenge website