The Fish Tank Happy Meal
Brief
The goal of this project was to create a new Happy Meal experience for McDonald's by researching the Happy Meal experience, conceptualizing a theme, designing, and constructing physical containers. The Fish Tank Happy Meal contains an entrée, fries, drink, and a toy and includes aspects of McDonald's company branding.
Challenge
The Fish Tank Happy Meal's goal was to get a younger audience interested in fish tanks/aquariums and fishkeeping by creating a fun experience. The meal is a custom box with themed food containers and themed toy.
Role
Research, Illustration, Visual Design, Template Layout & Printing, Prototyping
Applications Used
Procreate, Illustrator, Photoshop
Why
Class Project
Happy Meal Container
For the Happy Meal container, I decided to use a hexagonal box with a lid to emulate a fish tank or aquarium. The minimal, illustrative style makes the happy meal more palatable for younger audiences and creates a more friendly approach.
The branding elements, such as the happy meal smile and the golden arches, all interact with the environment they're in. The plants wrap around the smile and the golden arches lays on the ground as fish tank decor.
4pc Chicken McNuggets Container (Entrée)
The 4pc Chicken McNuggets meal design I took similar elements from the main happy meal container and created fish hiding between plants. I illustrated the 4 out of bubbles to create a more interesting way to display the number of nuggets in the box.
Fry Container
The fry container is a custom template that is shaped like a fish. I wanted to make the fish look like it was eating the fries/holding them in it's mouth.
Drink
The drink design will be interactive with the toy. I designed the drink to resemble another mini fish tank/aquarium in a minimalistic way to not take away from the fish stickers that will be put on the cup.
Toy
The toy for this happy meal is stickers that can be placed on the cup to "create their own fish tank." The stickers are from fish (except the different colored duplicates) that can be found on the nugget box, fry box, and happy meal container.
The back of the sticker sheet also includes a QR code to direct parents/children to a website where they can learn more about building their own fish tank and keeping a fish pet.
Research
For the happy meal theme, I came up with three ideas. Two of the ideas were collaborations with video games, but I ended up choosing my third idea, which was the Fish Tank meal. This idea was more original and allowed for more flexibility. To understand more about the packaging, I purchased my own happy meal to figure out the dimensions and layout. To get a better understanding of my own happy meal theme, I researched different kinds of plants and fish that exist in aquariums as well as different styles representing aquatic life.
Sketches
For my sketches, I worked through different box types and how the overall happy theme meal was going to be. Initially, I wanted to focus on fish as the primary theme of the meal, but I shifted it over to a fish tank/aquarium theme because it's more interesting and flexible theme that can include fish AND other elements.
Prototyping and Construction
I looked for a template that would fit my idea for my happy meal container, which was a hexagonal box. For the fish fry box, I went through trial and error until the fry box looked like how I wanted it to. For the other templates, I traced them onto illustrator and adjusted them until how I needed.
Reflection
I liked the flexibility of this project and having the option to create a happy meal theme out of anything. I enjoyed coming up with the design of the happy meal box and seeing it come together. It was challenging to create the physical boxes but it pushed me to learn more about prototyping and creating quality containers.
