How brilliant is this? Designer Patrick Sung's Universal Packaging System is meant to precisely fit anything that needs shipping. The individual cardboard sheets are scored with a triangle pattern that can either be fitted to an oddly shaped object, or formed into a custom fitted cardboard box:
Potentially massive savings would result from all the extra shipping space saved—cutting down on how much space each package takes up, and therefore the number of gas-guzzling trucks needed during shipping.
There's just a few niggles. For one, would anyone really put up with the added hassle of folding a custom-sized box, given all the added complexity? And two, the space savings issue might be more complicated than it seems: If people pack things in oddly shaped boxes, there's every possibility that these all don't fit together well enough to actually save space. (That's why square-shaped boxes are so efficient.) But still, with a few tweaks—such as printed guidelines for easily creating boxes of different size—this could be the cleverest thing since the Puma shoebox redesign.