PACKAGING DESIGN WITH WORKING FILES FOR CLIENT TO USE
Client: HAXS
Project: Detailing Product Packaging Design System
The Challenge
HAXS didn't start as a product brand. It started with three years of a detailer testing formulas on real cars, every day, until the products were good enough to put his name on.
I found out about them as a customer. Stage two polish and ceramic coating on my car and wheels, and when I saw the finish I asked what he'd used. Turned out the whole chemical line was his own: all purpose cleaner, snow foam, contact wash, wheel cleaner, the lot. He'd been building toward selling it for years. What he didn't have was packaging.
The brief had a specific requirement that shaped everything. He didn't want five finished bottle designs. He wanted one working file he could use himself, so the range could grow without a designer sitting between him and every new product. Cohesive across the line, but with each bottle able to stand on its own.
The Process
We approached it as a system rather than a set of artworks, and built it for someone who isn't in Illustrator every day.
Key Steps:
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Design Direction
Developed the packaging look across the range, working out what needed to stay fixed for the line to read as one brand and what could shift from product to product. (Anything worth calling out on the direction itself? Colour system, hierarchy, how you handled the product name?) -
Type & Brand Assets
Selected and supplied typography specific to the brand, so the packaging doesn't look like anything else on a shelf full of car care products. (Licensed, purchased, or custom? Worth naming if you can.) -
Building the Working File
Structured the file so it's genuinely usable by the client. Layers named and organised logically, elements grouped the way someone thinks about them rather than the way software organises them, and the editable parts clearly separated from the parts that hold the brand together. The goal was simple: he can change a product name and a colour and have a new bottle, without being able to accidentally break the design. -
Full Source Handover
Delivered everything. Working files, fonts, assets, complete ownership. No dependency on us to keep the range moving.
The Result
HAXS is now selling its full line of detailing products in packaging the founder designed as much as we did.
He's got the file, he's made the variations he wanted, and he can add a new product to the range whenever a new formula is ready without waiting on anyone. That was the actual brief, and it's the part that matters. A brand three years in the making shouldn't be bottlenecked by artwork.
