Turning Packaging Into Poetry: Stuti Sukhani’s ‘Hidden Poems’ Makes the Mundane Magical

She proves how art and poetry surround us, often in everyday objects. From a packet of biscuits to a packet of potato chips, she uses the blackout technique to find words that evoke clarity in otherwise mundane bits of often-ignored text.

For 27-year-old Stuti, writing always came naturally. Her first brush with creative writing came at the tender age of nine. As part of a class assignment, she wrote her first fiction storybook. She included a copyright statement, a dedication, acknowledgements, and an “about the author” page at the end of the book. She even art-directed and illustrated a cover, stitching the handwritten pages together into a homemade book.

HerZindagi spoke to Stuti about her work as a brand manager and her unique poetry project, Hidden Poems.

Creativity and Curiosity Pave the Way, from Branding Solutions to Poetry

Stuti has always been curious is a part of how she approaches design and branding. “I was always the designer in the room asking questions about why things were the way they were - why this concept, why this colour, why this medium. I learnt that I always wanted to know more to answer those questions, and that’s how I found myself getting into more of the strategy work that’s done before design even starts,” she said.

Stuti presently works as a brand manager at The Working Assembly, a design agency in New York City.

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Her journey into poetry started with a creative prompt at the School of Visual Arts (SVA): repeat one artistic endeavour for 100 days. She was, at that time, pursuing her Masters degree in Branding from SVA.

It was her curiosity about brands and their various aspects that led her to delve deeper into their packaging, to look for more meaning. That’s what led to the poetry project, Hidden Poems.

Hidden Poems: Finding Meaning in the Packaging of Regular Products

Each day, Stuti selected a different piece of packaging—snack packets, moisturiser tubes, and even milk cartons—and carefully blacked out words until the remaining ones formed a poem.

“By using the tool of blackout poetry, I was taking written material that people often don’t give a second glance to, and finding words that struck personal meaning with me,” she said. “However personal the meaning may have been, though - I was able to connect with people through this poetry and different people found different things that they too could relate to, or found poems that resonated with them on some level.”

Her endeavour resulted in a collection of 100 such poems, which can be found on the Instagram handle @100hiddenpoems. The poems reflect small moments of introspection, humour, or emotional commentary, drawn from the overlooked language of mundane back labels and general packaging. People responded to the project favourably, often connecting more with brands they’ve been familiar with or have used themselves.

For Stuti, poetry has always been a method of writing the things and expressing herself when the subject matter is not necessarily something I want to discuss, or I don’t know how to discuss.

“When I was younger, I used to make blackout poetry on newspapers and old textbooks. Today, however, I am no longer surrounded by old newspapers but by the boxes of all the things and brands that I purchase and use in my day-to-day life. So I decided to use this thing that was subversively filling my life, and flip it, by way of making the mundane things around me just a little more lyrical,” she said.

Poetry is all around us, Stuti’s project highlights, and all we need to do is look closer.