The stunning packaging design for Arduino products

One the highlights of Maker Faire for me was meeting Massimo Banzi, the co-founder of the Arduino project. He's very friendly and we had a nice time talking about design. I also enjoyed meeting Luisa Castiglioni, his girlfriend. She's a writer for a number of design magazines, including Domus. (Here's an article she wrote for Domus about makers in the Italian design world.)

Massimo brought with him to Maker Faire samples of the new packaging for Arduino's line of products, and they are beautiful. There were designed by Todo studio, which is run by Giorgio Olivero. Massimo was Giorgio's professor at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy.

Take a look at Todo's photo gallery of Arduino packaging.

• [einsteinatthemall]

  Very nice. I see a slight influence of Barney Bubbles, the fellow who designed many of the Stiff Records album packages of the 70s. Wonder if there’s a connection (?) It’s good to see designers subverting function for beauty and using modern printing techniques to the fullest

• [John English]

  I have a great deal of respect and appreciation for Arduino, having used their platform for dozens of projects since ~2007. However, I feel frustrated that they seem to spend more time working on things like packaging than improving the hardware and following through with announced plans.

  Last fall they said they were going to release an Atmega32u4 based Arduino, and a 32-bit system. Both of these were supposed to be out six over months ago, but there’s been no public development, and next to no communication with the community when we (on the arduino message board) ask for data or offer to help. This is sad for what’s supposed to be an open hardware endeavour.

  I love you Arduino, but I hope you don’t neglect the technical side of your platform in favor of working on packaging and marketing.

  • [Ryan Holmes]

    Well you know they dont actually design it themselves dont you? Like most places they hire a studio to handle that side of things. It’s all part of having a well-rounded business.

• [noah django]

  >Massimo Banzi
  any relation to Buckaroo?

• [Jonathan]

  I really like their packaging, and the pains they go through to explain exactly why having the product made in Italy is better than having it made in some third-world factory. I had to laugh though; I showed it to our IT guy at work, and he waved it off as being “Like Apple”. I responded that Arduino was about as far removed from Apple as is humanly possible :)

  • [TheMudshark]

     As in: Apple also has nice packaging?

• [Giorgio Olivero]

   @boingboing-2a268ebfdae01eae64cd27ca45522002:disqus: thanks! :-) I have to admit that I’ve never heard the name Barney Bubbles before. My fault :) I’m googling him right now.@google-950b8736e6ccc2a48ce6d4dcdff1ef22:disqus : I can assure you that the work on the packaging is not absorbing more than 0.00025% of the Arduino’s team time (pseudo-realistic estimate based on over one year of experience). They do are really committed on innovating and delivering new boards. But as you can imagine their schedule is quite packed. Don’t worry, the project pace will become even steadier in the near future. About marketing: as far as I know Arduino never spent a single dollar/euro on it :-)
  @yahoo-XDXCHOC3MSV5MBEOPV76POG7EE:disqus : thanks for noticing it. It makes us proud.

  • [John English]

     Thanks for the reply, Giorgio. Again, much respect and many thanks to the Arduino team. You’ve undoubtedly had a phenomenal impact on the open hardware and hacker community. I started using Arduino’s in college, and it helped lead me to become an electrical engineer. I know many others have similar stories.

    I’m glad to know that you’re dedicated to producing new and ever better hardware. However, I’d be *elated* if there was more communication and openness with the community for that development process. Lots of us Arduino fans and developers feel this way, as you can see here: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php?topic=88029.90

• [skeletoncityrepeater]

  Blue and orange, always a winner

• [Giorgio Olivero]

  @google-950b8736e6ccc2a48ce6d4dcdff1ef22:disqus  as far as I know a board that could be of your interest is in beta testing :)
  Take a look here: https://twitter.com/mbanzi/status/203622431305375746/photo/1

• [TheMudshark]

  Very nice design indeed. Friendly, playful, approachable but still technical and sleek.

• [HubrisSonic]

  I have to agree, I was really surprised by how good it looked when I opened it.