You’ve probably seen Contain’s work before – and covered it haphazardly in crumbs and sauce. Run by industrial designer Brittney Wheeler, the company is responsible for some of Melbourne’s most creative packaging and merchandise, and it’s become a fast favourite of the local hospo industry.
Wheeler’s client list includes food and beverage heavyweights such as Four Pillars, The Everleigh, Hector’s Deli and Lune alongside high-profile brands P Johnson, Rising Festival and Troye Sivan. All of these work with her team to create branded packaging and merch: premium tote bags and tea towels, bespoke caps, boxes and bottles, and more.
From her Abbotsford office, she talks to Broadsheet about sustainable merch, bagging heavy sandwiches, and thinking in 3D.
When did you launch Contain?
I was on maternity leave from my job at Third Drawer Down in 2017 and decided I wanted to do my own thing. My daughter was really young and I needed to get out of the house, so I started at a co-working space in Cremorne. There were lots of other creatives there and I took extra desks on as the business expanded. Then in lockdown I found the warehouse.
Restaurant T-shirts became the new rock tees in Covid. Did you ride the wave?
Contain really grew in Covid. I started a side hustle making face masks using organic cotton and hemp. One day Zoë Foster Blake posted them on her social media. I was at the park with the kids and all these orders suddenly started coming in. We sold $20,000 worth of masks in 24 hours. The cash flow helped grow the business and we’ve grown organically ever since. [Hospo] merch really took off because that’s another revenue stream for businesses.
Tell us about some of your favourite projects.
A pivotal moment was working with [design studio] Swear Words and Simon Schulz [of Schulz Organic Dairy] to make a returnable, reusable glass milk bottle. They had the look and feel and we brought the structural element to the bottle and the production knowledge. Since then, one million bottles have been returned and refilled and 40 tonnes of plastic saved from landfill. We are also doing more health and beauty, like packaging for [Collingwood day spa] Sense of Self and for Troye Sivan’s fragrance company Tsu Lange Yor.
Packaging is usually made to be thrown away. How do you combat waste?
As much as I love packaging, I’m also a bit anti-packaging. We say no to foam inserts and plastic laminated cardboard and try to educate people about recycling and sustainability. We also work to the parameters of the printer to minimise waste in production. We are FSC [Forest Stewardship Certified] so we have that accountability and can tell you where all our product comes from.
What are some of your most popular products?
The Meatsmith tote was huge, everyone wanted that one [Wheeler’s partner is Troy Wheeler, co-owner of Meatsmith]. Totes have been literally getting bigger and bigger – we did one for [beverage company] Strange Love recently which is like the size of a laundry bag. And we made a cap for Coffee Supreme with “Cappuccino” embroidered on it, which became a hit.
What are the main challenges working in food packaging?
The main thing is designing for purpose, so making sure the material is suitable for fridge or freezer use, or that it’s easy to assemble in a retail setting. For Wild Life Bakery we researched where they stored the packaging, how it fit in the space, how they served it from the counter, and that informed the design.
Have you had any packaging disasters, like exploding bags?
For Hector’s Deli we had to measure and weigh the sandwiches to make sure they’d fit in the different sized bags and the handles would hold the weight. There was a lot of research involved, and we all had our favourite sandwich by the end! That’s a bonus when designing food packaging – “You mean we have to get another package of hot cross buns for the photo shoot?” It’s a tough gig.
Do you have a lot of unwritten design rules in your head?
I guess so. Designing pizza bags for DOC, we included handles on the form, so you don’t need another bag to carry it, and it eliminates the need for a secondary piece of packaging. With food you need to use soy-based inks – you can’t use any inks that aren’t safe! – and use food-safe boards. We do lots of prototyping and testing for each project. There are also considerations around recycling. A lot of paper bags might have cotton handles, which makes it unrecyclable unless you pull them off. So, thinking about how the packaging will be reused or recycled at the end of life is just as important as the products going inside.
Do you dream in 3D?
Yes. My mind can fold different pieces of paper in my head. I’ll think about [a problem] for ages [and] the answer will come to me in the shower. People never know how much thought goes into the final product.
This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.