Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

Steve Jobs once mentioned it takes lots of hard work to make something simple, genuinely understand the underlying challenges, and develop elegant solutions.

Take a wild guess on what comes to your mind when you think of the below pointers.

• Two billion of these are being used year on year in the US alone 
• Four billion of these are being used year on year worldwide
• Designed as early as 1963 and is being used almost in the same form for more than 50 years

Wondering what the Product above represents - It's the Pizza Box - Ever wondered why the box is square shaped instead of circular one.

Before going to the Pizza Box, let us know a fact about food delivery. 

Many families and working women found it stressful to cook daily and manage office priorities during COVID lockdown and found food delivery to be a boon during such situations. Did you know Thomas Stephen Monaghan(Tom) revolutionized food delivery as early as 1984?

Nobody thought one could make money on food delivery; some restaurants had a delivery option when they were new and cut out delivery service after a while. But Tom - who founded Dominos Pizza, realized a business potential by delivering to home, and he was the pioneer to announce, "If a customer didn't receive the order within 30 minutes, it is free."

Now Tom had a problem in delivering pizza. It should look, taste, and served hot as one would have in a restaurant for which he thought delivering in a box would be the solution. He approached the designers to design a box for below requirements:

• Pizza is warm item that is a combination of moisture-emitting and dry components
• The item needs to move from A to B with heat and chemical composition intact.

Designers thought about this and proposed multiple designs:

Some designs completely sealed the pizza, so the moisture will make its drier parts soggy | Some designs vented it too much, and you end up losing all the heat | Some designs had aluminum or even circular boxes similar to a pizza shape.

None of these designs impressed Tom as they didn't fit the need or either expensive or not something easy to transport in bulk.

All designers gave up, saying it wouldn't be possible to design such a box. Tom didn't give up and mentioned, "American technology is putting space satellites in orbit these days, and designers are telling that we cannot punch a clean hole in cardboard is not acceptable." 

Finally, after multiple retries, a square-shaped corrugated box was born, a material made from three layers of paper liners glued together with an airing hole opening on the side of the box, and it costs 27 cents to make one and easy to transport in bulk.

Next time when you order a pizza, take a brief moment to admire the design; it's a woefully under-appreciated product ever designed.