Tricor Braun
St. Louis, MO

TricorBraun has it all going on. This name was created in 1998 when Tricor Packaging—founded in 1902 Northwestern Bottle Company—and the W. Braun Company combined forces. This merger and recent acquisitions have amassed the the history, talents, and resources of quite a number of assorted packaging companies. TricorBraun is as diverse as its company's markets are, serving the personal care, healthcare, food and wine, household, and industrial chemical markets. Clients range from small regional food fillers to the best-known multinationals.

TricorBraun serves its clients by providing excellent talents in the conceptual industrial design and graphic arts arenas. It also offers state-of-the-art hardware and software to provide both photo-realistic renderings and 3D surface models detailed enough to actually construct tooling. These are electronically transferred to the engineering facility who converts the concepts to the steel used for molding.

TricorBraun Team (left to right): Chantelle Mika, graphic designer; David Snyder, design director; Craig Sawicki, executive vice president; Michael Murphy (in back), senior designer; Kim Hartelius (sitting), industrial designer; Greg Jimenez (sitting), industrial designer.

"Our Engineering facility has use of the same hardware and software and employs the best of blow-mold engineering talent," claims Craig Sawicki, executive vice president. "We also have over 20 years of experience in both tool building and blow molding. This provides a seamless transition from one competency to the next, affording our customers a speed to market found nowhere else."

The design process usually starts with a creative briefing to get a sense of the customer's needs and research on the product being marketed. This is followed by a multi-stage conceptual presentation and then a detailed focus on chosen concepts. The end results are detailed engineering prints and finally the finished package.

TricorBraun concentrates almost exclusively in the design of containers and closures. Sawicki believes that with the knowledge of plastics processing and the creativity of TricorBraun's personnel, they can both stretch the limits of the individual process and provide the pragmatism necessary in a production environment. He calls this "informed creativity."

Sawicki considers ergonomics, utility, and form to be important elements in TricorBraun's package design. "Our quest with each design project is to make each of these elements indistinguishable from the other two," Sawicki says. "So, the form provides the ergonomics and utility, while the ergonomics dictate utility and form."

Read more about TricorBraun in the October 2005 issue of Package Design Magazine's article "Engineered for Flexibility." This article is archived online at www.packagedesignmag.com/tb.