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CHICAGO, IL (January 1, 2010) – Tirso Olivares Design, a package design innovation company located in Chicago, is pleased to announce its recent work for Henkel and the development of a new spray bottle design for a new total bathroom cleaner.

Tirso Olivares was selected by Henkel Consumer Goods Inc. to design a spray bottle for a new Soft Scrub® bathroom cleaner product, offering consumers a convenient way to quickly clean and deodorize the entire bathroom, including the toilet, with just one product.  The bottle design features a unique angled neck and spray trigger that allows consumers to spray right side up and upside down, providing ergonomic benefits during application. 

Soft Scrub’s new cleaning product is the brand’s first total bathroom cleaner introduced to the category. It was imperative that consumers clearly understood the advantages offered by the unique structure and spray trigger. In addition, the new bottle design had to achieve critical manufacturing, cost and distribution requirements.

Historically, spray bottles have been a useful but unattractive household cleaning tool. With Soft Scrub’s innovative bottle design, the common spray bottle has been elevated into new territory within the bathroom cleaner category.

To meet the design and marketing challenges, Tirso Olivares created a bottle structure that quickly communicates the ease of use and spray application of the product. The angled neck is unique, differentiating the bottle from competitors, and ergonomic in its comfortable feel and use in directing and squeezing the spray nozzle in all directions.

The neck angle allows the consumer to intuitively hold the bottle in its most effective position without flexing, extending or rotating the wrist, and tiring the hand during squeezing / spraying.  The angle design also suggests an upside-down usage and ergonomic benefits when rotating the arm and wrist, such as spraying under the toilet rim. 

The patented trigger uses a spray screen that allows consumers to clean using either a powerful foam or a wide spray.  The foam is useful for cleaning tough stains, such as the inside of the toilet bowl or on shower walls, while the spray is ideal for large areas, such as countertops and sinks. Consumers can switch between the two simply by flipping the screen.  Pictograms displayed on the nozzle’s top surface clearly instruct its operation.  Tirso designed the neck to visually integrate the spray nozzle, creating a unified combination of stock and custom package components.

Tirso Olivares designed the new Soft Scrub spray bottle to communicate energy, efficacy and modernity with ergonomically curved grip surfaces and coordinating soft dimensional ridges at the shoulder and base to create a large label panel.  A full shrink label easily adapts to all of the bottle’s surfaces. 

The goal for the bottle design is to meet the expectations of Soft Scrub brand users, conveying effective cleaning, and providing consumers with a better application experience and emotional payoff when they experience the ergonomic benefits of the unique package. In consumer research, consumers agreed that the new bottle looked “like it would clean my entire bathroom,” is “different from other cleaners,” is “ modern and innovative”.