Dutch Packaging Design

For Coldenhove Paper,  Stepfive designed the company’s Stand including the give-away mug, all for the FESPA Digital 2011 in Hamburg. This paper manufactorer develops innovative paper like Digital dye sublimation paper, which is particularly interesting for designers in the field of product-, interior- and packaging design. The mug shows how the sublimation really gets into the material! Its not just a print on a mug, but a print in the actual glaze! Almost every item and material can easily be sublimed with designs you like. It’s solid, sharp and scratch-proof.

Digital dye sublimation is probably the most spectacular innovation of the last decades in the digital graphics industry. This leading-edge application represents the adaptation of advanced digital printing to the conventional process of dye sublimation transfer. By developing a range of transfer papers that offers the highest transfer yield, the best printabillity and runnability, in close co-operation with (amongst others) customers and leading equipment and media manufacturers.

see also: www.coldenhove.com

Involving designers in new product development leads to greater emphasis on experiential and functional design. Emphasis on experiential and functional design leads to improved new product performance, particularly if designers are given a high degree of freedom to explore ideas outside the project scope, experiential design is innovative, functional design is innovative and customer involvement is limited.

These are some of the findings by the Rotterdam School of Management in collaboration with the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.
According to their research, products will be almost 20% more profitable when more attention is being paid to design and visual appearance during development of products.
Click here to download the complete research (PDF).

Len Ostroff, CEO of Informous, a vertical content marketing search engine for the packaging and plastics industries, pleads for QR codes on packaging:
”If including social media is the packaging trend of today, QR codes are the trend of tomorrow.”
More on smart packaging design and QR codes here, here and here.

As far as our crystal ball can tell us, we present you with what generally is considered as the ‘top five most promising trends in packaging’. We look forward to the day we can look back on this and see what more or less ‘happened’, and what turned out to be total BS. Here we go:

1. Sustainability – reduced packaging material; reusable and refillable packaging; and lighter-weight and biodegradable plastics. The latter reduces transportation costs and the overall carbon footprint.
2. Decorating – “Retro” and “vintage” packaging remains a top decorating trend in 2011. Also popular is packaging with simple, minimalist decorating.

3. Electronic-Enabled Packaging – we will keep on integrating the use of our mobile technology (smart-phones) in our package designs. QR codes will appear more often.

4. Packaging is Shrinking – Packaging is getting smaller because prices of certain materials are increasing. So we shrink because consumers seem to notice price increases more readily than they notice package reduction or weight loss.

5. Made in … – when your offset is mostly situated in the country where you produce, a ‘made in …’ will likely to be seen as an added bonus. It tells that there were little transportation costs involved (sustainability), and makes you think the product suits you better than it’s cousins from the other side of the continent, world, galaxy.

For what it’s worth …