“Imagine looking up at the sky.
You see clouds—rolling endlessly, constantly shifting.
Depending on the time of day, the sky changes to different colours: morning, twilight, dawn, dusk, and that fleeting one-to-two-minute mid-evening light that defies description.
This vision draws from the feeling of being immersed in clouds, celebrating their hues and movement. When the SKY AFRICA nicotine tin is turned, it radiates a vibrant energy. Each design fuses diverse cloud illustrations with a contemporary maximalist aesthetic—uniquely expressive, distinctly evocative.” – Teresa Lubano
This vision guided the creative execution for Sky Africa by the nicotine snus company NIQO Company*. After four considered iterations—shaped by research with a female Kenyan consumer and even a direction digitally illustrated by a Kenyan artist—it culminated in packaging for five unique variants: Sky Africa Dawn, Elio, Nebula, Supernova, and Thunder, along with an extended range of names for future releases.
Duration: August 2023 – November 2023
Design Services: Brand Strategy, Packaging Design, Illustration, Naming
Tool: Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop & Illustrator)
Team: Teresa Nanjala Lubano, Creative Director | David Koinange, Art Director | Angela Mwaniki, Account Director
*Snus (tobacco-based) is also known as “smokeless tobacco”: Strong evidence supports snus as a harm-reduction tool compared to cigarettes. In Sweden—where snus use is widespread—adult smoking rates have dropped to just 5.6% (Wikipedia, 2022), the lowest in the EU, compared to the EU average of 18.4%. This dramatic reduction is attributed largely to the substitution of cigarettes with snus. Research also shows that male snus users in Sweden have less than half the rate of lung cancer deaths compared to European averages (87 vs. 220 per 100,000) (O’Leary & Polosa, 2020). While not risk-free, snus delivers substantially lower exposure to carcinogens and harmful combustion byproducts, making it a considerably safer alternative for nicotine users.
Reference:
This brief from a Swedish client offered a unique opportunity to design a brand—one of the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa—and went on to inspire an article by Teresa Lubano titled Crafting a Compelling Creative Strategy Deck for a Client. Read it here.