Packaging

Chinese Rice Packaging Design

How do you market a product that is viewed as a commodity in most parts of the world? Taipei-based Green in Hand sought to elevate the perceived value of rice grown locally in Eastern Taiwan by presenting it in stylish, contemporary packaging. Touting its brand as a “life style proposal of exquisite agriculture,” Green in Hand packaged its organic rice in an earthy plain brown paper bag with a natural twisted twine handle and hand-drawn calligraphy label to create a simple and sustainable look.

Colorful gift packaging reinforced Green in Hand’s message that it “provides service for those who care about the relationship between human and land.” The floral design looks pretty enough to be a ladies’ handbag. The packaging program won both the Red Dot and Hong Kong Design Council awards.

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Posters

IDA Congress Adopts a Global Perspective

IDA Poster 1

For its first-ever International Design Alliance (IDA) Congress in Taipei this October, the organization put out a worldwide call for a poster design. The response was particularly nice. Here are four by Helmut Langer, James Chen, Katsunori Watanabe and Kazumasa Nagai.

What’s intriguing about the IDA Congress, themed “Design at the Edges,” is its cross-disciplinary approach, encompassing industrial design, communication design and interior architecture/design, and its big global-issue program, covering economic development, the Internet, biotechnology, urbanism and international migration. Nothing lightweight about the topics. Not what you expect from a design conference. If the speakers stay true to these subject categories, it may be the first design conference that truly focuses on the role that design can play in addressing the major problems confronting the world today.

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