A practical course on why packages look the way they do: corrugated board specs, real shipping-cost formulas, and the actual economics behind sustainability claims — for anyone who has to box something up and ship it.
What you will do
Pull apart real packages — an oversized retail box, a compliance-labelled parcel, a brand unboxing — and work out which of three design logics actually produced them: brand experience, logistics cost, or compliance. From week 4 you trade guesswork for numbers: Australia Post's cubic-weight formula, ISTA 3A drop-test standards, and a real return-rate calculation, applied to the packages you tore down in week 1. You walk out with a packaging cost model you built and tested against a real product, and an answer — argued from evidence, not vibes — to the course's throughline claim that sustainability language on packaging is mostly marketing.
Who it is for
Anyone who sells things online, or wants to: the course assumes no prior knowledge of packaging engineering, freight pricing, or logistics, but does assume you're comfortable with basic arithmetic and reading a spec sheet. If you've ever wondered why your order arrived in a box big enough for a microwave, this course explains it — and asks you to decide whether the explanation should change how you'd package something yourself.