Dutch Packaging Design

For the Dutch company Zwanenberg Food Group, Stepfive created this serie of packaging labels for a range of tasteful snacks. This graphic and colorful look with much attention to branding and visibility of the products is successfully introduced at the Dutch consumer market.

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.

Excellent Packaging design and social responsibility can go hand in hand. A good exemple is ‘No House Wine’, a new wine-label that uses it’s profits to build houses for so called kid-parents (older brothers and sisters who take care of their younger ones) of HIV-contaminated families. It prevents kids from getting homeless after their parents died of AIDS.

The international awarded design (New York Festivals (silver), Art Directors Club Nederland (zilveren lamp), Epica (silver) was designed by  Edwin Vollebergh. It delicately cites the subject (houses and moving): an apparently handwritten signing on the front and a label made of packaging-tape on the back.
More on ‘No House’ Wine here.

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.

Looking for a great read that just hit the shelves? Check out ‘The Package Design Book’ written by Julius Wiedemann. This recently published book showcases Pentaward winners from the worldwide packaging design contest. Featuring a vibrantly yellow cover, the book itself is an example of eye-catching design not to mention having over 400 product pages. Each page has high quality images of food, beverage, and beauty products along with a short summary about the packaging design. The Package Design Book can be purchased at TASCHEN.

Every year since it’s founding in 2006 the European Design Awards make selections of the best European graphic design, illustrations and interactive designs. The award is presented by a collaboration of fourteen European designmagazines, among which the Dutch magazine ‘Vormberichten’. These awards are great for promotional purposes and exposure for the winners on an international scale. More information on the EDA can be found here.