Monash Memo - articles - 24 October 2001

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Oh sausage, we won!

Monash visual communications and design students walked away with more than half the honours at this year's Southern Cross Packaging Awards.

One of the more quirky designs among the university's five gold prize-winners was that of third-year student Ms Lena Shifman, who designed sausage-shaped barbecue sauce bottles.

Ms Shifman came up with the idea for her barbecue sauce bottles, which she has named BBQUEUE, while on picnics with her friends, who would frequently fight over the sauce bottles.

The sausage-shaped bottles, designed to contain condiments such as sweet chilli sauce, mustard and tomato sauce, are distinctively coloured to match their contents and can be joined together - just like a row of snags.

Sold in packs of three, the bottles can be hung like real sausages in the meat section of a supermarket to catch the consumer's eye.

"I got this idea simply by trying to come up with something new, fun and exciting and by looking at the existing bottles, which are dull and boring," Ms Shifman said.

"There should be more laughter in our world, and I believe that good design has elements of shock, surprise and humour."

Other Monash students awarded gold prizes were Mr Warain Benjapong for 'eau de toilette packaging', Ms Jennifer Paul for 'an adult money tin', Mr Michael Owen for 'a mobile phone pack' and Ms Jennie Isaacs for 'a city lunch box'.

In addition to the five gold awards, Monash students won three silver, nine bronze and seven commendations in the prestigious national awards program run by the Packaging Council of Australia. Visual communications course coordinator Mr Russell Kennedy said he was delighted with the win.

"We rate this program very highly and have built it into the second and third-year visual communications curriculum," he said.