What is covered, week by week, and which topics each lecture draws on.
Every lecture the course claims to run gets a dated page and a teaching-team
reference. A course decides how many lectures it needs; one of them carries a
real deck. related: connects lectures to the sessions and assessments they
feed.
Reading a Box - Three Design Logics
Three real packages, three different things each one was actually built to do — and the claim this course spends twelve weeks testing
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Corrugated Board - What the Flute Buys You
Flute type is a cost-and-protection trade-off with no sustainability content of its own — the first number behind week 1's three logics
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Proving It Survives - ISTA 3A
What "survives shipping" is actually tested against, and why the test exists to protect a return/liability cost, not the planet
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Paying by Air - The Cubic Weight Formula
The formula a courier actually bills against, and the number that turns week 1's oversized lululemon box into a real line item
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Reading an Industry's Own Data - The Fibre Box LCA
A rigorous, peer-reviewed life-cycle study, published by the trade association for the material it favours — this week's central critical-reading exercise
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Midpoint - What Are They Actually Optimising For?
No new facts this week — revisit Apple, lululemon and OnTheList with four weeks of formulas and standards behind you
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
The Cost of Coming Back - Returns Economics
An e-commerce return isn't free once it leaves the warehouse — the return-rate and reverse-logistics numbers behind the other half of the throughline claim
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Designing the Reveal - Nudge Theory and the Unboxing Moment
Thaler and Sunstein's choice-architecture framework, and what it does and doesn't explain about why brand packaging is built the way it is
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Three Original Declarations - Shipping Under a Rule You Didn't Write
OnTheList's dangerous-goods label from week 1, and the actual IATA/UPS paperwork requirement standing behind it
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
Designed for One, Used by Everyone - OXO Good Grips
Betsey Farber's arthritis, a bad vegetable peeler, and the origin of universal design as a case this course's logics haven't optimised for
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
The Redesign Studio - Six Constraints, One Box
No new facts this week — hold cubic-weight cost, flute choice, sustainability-claim literacy, returns economics, dangerous-goods compliance and accessible design in tension on one real product
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Closing the Loop - Back to Three Logics
No new facts this week — the course ends where it started, testing the three-logic framework and the throughline claim against your own redesign instead of someone else's box
Week 12 · 10 May 2027