With both heavy hearts and relief we’d like to share that we’ll be closing down Guacamole Airplane at the end of July 2024, and we are no longer taking on new jobs.

A design consultancy is a tough business model, one we never quite figured out. To fellow small business & agency owners, we have tremendous respect for all of your efforts.

The list of thank yous is long, but most importantly we’d like to thank our staff who kept this studio alive and humming over the last six years : Tom Kochtitzky, Marisa Sanchez Dunning, Claire Wiegand, Tasha Westbrook, Amy Murphy, Adam Blish, Josephine Tov, Lauren Nipper, Gabby Kim, Joanne Chu, Olivia Whitener, Katelan Cunningham, Mary Lempres, Zach Mosher, Maeli Martin, and Chloe Pavlovich.

6 years rocking was no small feat, and we feel incredibly lucky to have worked on some amazing projects. A few come to mind are

* algae ink packaging with Nike,
* massive plastic reduction efforts with brands like Dell, Whole Foods Market, and Balsam Hill,
* giving form to seaweed packaging with Flamingo Estate, EcoEnclose, and Sway.
* creating beautiful high-touch user experiences with Hammerheads Karoo 2 and Karoo 3 packaging
* some super secret super dope work launching for Harrys soon
* and creating an open source sustainable packaging supplier guide that became an industry standard

We will leave this website and supplier guide live as an archived reference.

And to anyone reading this, thanks for following along. It certainly won’t be the end of this type of sustainable design work for myself or our team, just hopping off the horse for a quick drink and a survey before charting a new course. Onwards and into the mist!

-Ian

The Studio

We are a design studio focused on sustainable packaging. Our general scope of work covers structural packaging design and sustainability consulting for packaging. We operate at a unique niche of in-depth sustainability research and pragmatic working skills in packaging design.

Our work is informed by an interest in the fields of sustainable material innovation, packaging manufacturing, origami, climate science, 1970’s hippie modernism, and the unique opportunities of modern industry to work towards decarbonization. In our studio we pursue hands-on work with cardboard, paper pulp, plastic, algae, mushroom foams, agricultural waste, wood, metal, soy inks, and anything else our clients throw at us.

And so, here we are… a peculiar but useful design studio acting as a conduit between industry and mother earth herself.

Core Team

FAQs

Where does the name Guacamole Airplane come from?

The name Guacamole Airplane is a play off of an Ed Ruscha painting. We liked the image of something functional created by something surprising and organic. And we figured it would be a good litmus for clients in our early years. If they were open to working with a studio with such a weird name they’d probably be more open to more unusual design solutions.

What is sustainable packaging?

There’s no one easy answer to that question, as every situation calls for a unique solution. We consider minimizing a package’s impact across these six areas.

• Carbon Footprint in Production

• Resource Intensity

• Volume & Weight

• Package End-of-Life

• Toxicity

• Environmental Justice

What does Guacamole Airplane’s process look like?

Our process varies depending on if we’re working on a design project or a sustainability consulting project.

For structural package design projects our goals are manufacturing ready files for a product or series of products. We begin with a research & alignment phase where we agree upon sustainability goals, settle on an articulated design statement, pull relevant reference projects, and build a rubric of available material & process option with cost & manufacturing context. From there we branch out into sketches, 3D models, physical prototypes and continue to iterate, perfect, and test over until we arrive upon manufacturing ready concepts.

For sustainability consulting projects our goal is to build frameworks and pathways for organizations to move towards concrete sustainability goals. Our process generally involves conducting interviews with relevant industry partners, performing LCAs, distilling white papers and peer-reviewed data, preparing data visualizations, and formulating that research into actionable avenues forward with tangible sustainability gains.

Increasingly our projects are blending both sustainability consulting and structural packaging design.

When should a brand get in touch?

The earlier the better, 12-18 months from a product’s launch is best. The design process can take 2-5 months depending on scope, and testing and manufacturing can take an additional 3-6 months. That said each project is different and we are to offer consulting help at any stage of the process.

Do YOU ONLY WORK WITH BRANDS? OR ARE YOU OPEN TO WORKING WITH PACKAGING MANUFACTURERS?

Since 2022 we’ve taken on several partnerships annually with packaging manufacturers serving as a external design and R&D partners. This has been a new way of working for us that we really enjoy.

Are you available for speaking engagements?

Yes. We enjoy speaking with design driven organizations over hour long “lunch and learn” sustainability seminars, where we dive deep into best practice sustainability strategies for packaging design. We are also available for conferences, ideally locally in California, and enjoy speaking with student groups.

We’ve spoken at these conferences: AIGA Conference 2020, Dieline Conference 2021, BOPP Conference 2022, Plastics Recycling World Expo 2022, Sustainability in Packaging 2023.

We’ve hosted sustainability seminars at these organizations: IDEO, Redscout, Material, Aruliden, Patagonia Provisions.

And we’ve (mis)educated youths at these institutions: ArtCenter, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly SLO, Fresno State, Pratt Institute, University of San Francisco, George Washington High School, South San Francisco Department of Parks & Rec.

What types of projects do you enjoy most ?

Our team is pretty evenly split between sustainability research and structural packaging design, and we love the unexpected challenges that come each new project. That said we’re particularly drawn to projects that tackle material innovation, decarbonizing the packaging supply chain, and challenging category norms and designing novelty into packaging.

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