Dutch Packaging Design

Packaging design always had to look slick on the shelves, be functional, protective and attractive, not too heavy and most important: at a prominent place in stores, dying to be bought. But what remains from all of this when we’re shopping online? Do we choose only the products nowadays, or is there still an important role left for packaging design?
Shikatani Lacroix’ Design Lounge did an interesting study on this theme.
Want to know the answers? Go here.

An entertaining and yet educative app for the iPhone and iPad is launched by ‘Plastics Make it Possible‘. The name? Bin It! A fun and addictive new game that challenges you to recycle your packaging and other stuff in a fun way! Bin It is a free game. Download it in the app store.

Again a wonderfull asset for our bookshelf, “packed” with inspiration: THE ART OF PACKAGE DESIGN. A recent assembly of international designers is creating highly outstanding and savvy designs to complement the nature and function of a product. Editor Wendy Xu included the Atelier LaDurance Japanese Denim packaging in the publication that is about innovative packaging designs that functions beyond ‘simply product wrappers’. A creative treasure published by Gingko Press: www.gingkopress.com

Stepfive created several design concepts for the toys including the ones you can see here. White, combined with a strong primary colour or colours gives a stronger result than white with weakened pastels, because that makes it look old fashioned and dirty. In contrary, white gives the designs a fresh and modern look with yet a responsable touch at the same time. Therefore we choose to work mainly with white combined with fresh and bright colours. The design above are shown as 3D view, as separate packaging and as separate packaging on a plastic display stand.

A fine example of what pakaging can do besides just containing and/or selling a product, given by Designworks Melbourne. These air-instruments are part of a ‘Play Air Campagne’, a campaign which helped raise money for an organisation called The Song Room. The Song Room is a charitable organisation who help ensure that underprivileged schools can allow their students to partake in creativity. Deservedly nominated for a Cannes Lions award for Promo & Activation.

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).

Stepfive created the packaging for this modern headset from Emotion. You will experience beautiful sounds and audio with this high-tech headset. The graphical appeal of the slick design- and metallook and high quality of the headset has been a source of inspiration for creating this clean yet strong packaging.

Why pay a lot of money for your beautiful bra and then have it ruined in your washing machine? The Betty Ball is the solution for keeping your padded or normal bras in perfect shape. Stepfive redesigned a golden/black packaging design with much attention to product experience and a luxury feeling. The Betty Ball was succesfully launched all over Europe.

After a few days of incubating, molding and drying, mushroom roots are ready to be used as… packaging material! This biodegradable material is also fireproof and a good insulator. Get a peek at packaging in the 21st century in Innovation Nation with Miles O’Brien.