Dutch Packaging Design

In a world of tremendous fast growing digitalization, packaging design can’t stay far behind. Want to ‘feel’ a package and see it’s benefits without having the actual package in hands? Apps and other digital media provides us, in combination with regular printed media, an innovative and even better way of advertising.
Stepfive Communication & Design designed and developed a mobile and desktop website for Dutch candy producer Look-O-Look, to be reached by a QR-code at advertisements. Consumers and sales managers can digitally feel and navigate around the new package design at this site. In combination with printed and social media it gives Look-O-Look a wide spread and an effective campaign to show their brand and products.

Stepfive creates new distinctive retail and catering concepts for food and beverage brands on a daily basis. We develop new concepts, recipes, brands and packaging design together with our clients. We also revitalise existing products on our own initiative, because we are convinced many products could have a more successful brand appearance with the right adaption and repositioning. For example, we have created this new concept for Bloody Mary.

This Bloody Mary concept can be used for the catering and retail sector. The bottle has two facings (meant for standing and hanging) and can therefore be placed on a shelf, perhaps in a retail environment, or can be suspended within catering establishments. You also have the option of attaching a connecting piece with a hose, allowing drinking glasses to be filled with Bloody Mary from a bottle hanging on the bar.

The event for everyone who admits that packaging is ”more than just a box around a product”. If you’re responsible for your company’s goods, such as SRP, shelf standout, the development of new designs or a product’s life span, then PACKAGING INNOVATIONS 2012 is your number one must-see exhibition of the year.
Wednesday 28 / thursday 29 november 2012, Passenger Terminal, Amsterdam

The exhibition ‘Food Forward‘ presents scenarios for the future of our food based on the work of artists and designers. The starting point is the video ‘The Hunt’ by Christian Jankowski (DE) that humorously puts the estrangement between city dwellers and food on edge. John O’Shea (UK) pushes the limits of the law in his attempts to achieve a more humane meat production and meat consumption scheme. Michiko Nitta and Michael Burton (UK) will present two scenarios from their larger study of life after agriculture: the symbiosis between humans and algae and a functional food regime. Arne Hendriks (NL) finally explores the possibilities and consequences of shrinking men to 50 centimeters.
Food Forward Exhibition:
15 January 2012 / 01 April 2012. Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague, The Netherlands

It’s that time of the year again. And as we’re used to, we like to thank our clients and other relations with a special gift for the successful cooperation this past year.
This years theme is ‘All the Best!’ (‘Het Beste’ in Dutch). Not only because the wine, a Domiziano Negroamaro del Salento, is best judged by a professional specialist journal, but also because we launched our renewed website this week. You can find all the best of our latest and past projects with our clients over there.
Stepfive Communication & Design wishes you All The Best for 2012!

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.

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.

Stepfive developed packaging design (a tissue box) as part of an introduction campaign for a new take on a typical Dutch snack, the Frikandel. This new breed contains onion, so we thought it was appropriate to reach out to anyone eating it by providing free tissues for all those teary eyes. ‘So good, you could cry’.

”You do know a great package when you see one. But what makes it great? Packaging design, in fact, is an act of balancing between creativity and functionality. ‘Pack Your Life’ focuses on the visual side of the package, its graphical appeal, not that much on package engineering.”

A brand new inspirational book on the things we love, published by Azur, Japan 2011.

Light-footed (in Dutch: lichtvoetig) ain’t a title that fits Stepfive Communication & Design too well. Contrary, we just love to do complex and new issues concerning packaging design and other graphic jobs for our clients! And we do love a chocolate bite too. That’s why we gave our clients this delicious chocolate foot last december as a new years present: to eat your heart out with Stepfive.