Category: Packaging

Packaging

Packaging That Doubles as Home Decor

By Delphine Hirasuna |

For packaging designers, retail shelf presence is the primary consideration. Does the brand stand out from the competition? Does it make shoppers think it is better, more innovative, easier to use? Does it make them want to buy it? Bravo, if it does all that. What’s often missing, however, is considering how some types of packaging will look when the consumer gets it home. This is often true of products like liquid soaps, dish detergents and hand lotions where the package serves as the dispenser. The product may be easy to spot on a drugstore shelf, but it looks too functional in a bad way when placed on your bathroom counter next to your color coordinated towels and elegant perfume bottles. So,it is delightful to see that Method, known for its eco-friendly cleaning products, has released limited edition packaging by Irish fashion designer Orla Kiely. Her patterns look botanically natural, fresh and contemporary, with fragrances like pear ginger, vanilla chai, bay leaf and primrose to match. The bottle shapes are equally charming. Even if it is Method dish soap or all-purpose cleaner, people will want to leave the bottle out to enjoy as part of the décor.

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Packaging

A Nutty Approach to Brand Design

By Delphine Hirasuna |

The product used to be called NutsOnline and its packaging identity was totally generic and forgettable. So, when the New Jersey-based online retailer secured the domain name “Nuts.com,” it set out to change its image by hiring a powerhouse team to design a new logo and packaging. The result is an identity that looks like it was created by precocious third-graders – but in a good way. The letters were hand-drawn by Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and digitized by type designer Jeremy Mickel. Illustrator Christoph Niemann made line-drawings of the gang of playful nuts. The effect is fresh and charming, and unconventionally nutty. As breezily executed as this design looks, it takes skill to make it appear spontaneous and carefree and not amateurish and crudely done. A closer looks shows there is a hierarchy to the information on the box and an organization to the design. Even the see-through nut personalities give consumers a glimpse of the product inside. This is sophisticated design made to look naïve.

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Packaging

Alternative Organic Packaging

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Sydney-based design agency, The Creative Method, says “give us a great story and we’ll give you a great brand.” So when Alternative Organic Wine asked them to design the packaging for a premium limited edition of its organic Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, they focused on the product’s naturalness and not on the traditional way that luxury wines are presented. Creative Method explains that the “concept shows a vine, from the leaves to the bark to the wine.” Every aspect of the packaging was natural, from the outer wrapping paper with the grape leaf pattern printed using organic inks, to the laser-cut balsa wood label, to the string and the wax seal used to affix the label. Just by looking at the packaging, it communicates unique and organic.

Packaging

With Mic’s Chilli, the Devil Is in the Details

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Irish chili may sound like an oxymoron, but Mic’s Chilli, made in Kilcoole, County Wicklow in Ireland, has the authentic look of a product that comes from “South of the Border” – and we don’t mean Tipperary.

Dublin-based illustrator Steve Simpson has done all of the branding and packaging work for Mic’s Chilli since it launched its first products at the end of 2010. Using Latin American patterns and iconography, the Inferno packaging features Day of the Dead skeleton figures, with “talk bubbles” showing chillis to indicate degrees of hotness — one chilli for mild; four chillis for on fire.

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Packaging

Olympic Branding Champions

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Coca-Cola has just unveiled six limited-edition cans to cheer on Team USA at the London Olympics this summer. San Francisco-based design agency, Turner Duckworth, combined three of the world’s most recognizable icons to communicate the entire story –the stripes of the American flag; the five interlocked rings of the Olympic logo and silhouette of an athlete, and Coca-Cola’s signature red and Spencerian script logotype. The effect is succinct, direct and graphically powerful. Coca-Cola is rotating the can designs throughout the summer, with a new one appearing every two weeks, culminating with a special composite logo timed for the opening of the Olympic Games.

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