Tran­si­tion in Pack­ag­ing by Design

Nurem­berg, Ger­many – Nürn­bergMesse and bay­ern design have orga­nized a spe­cial show titled Tran­si­tion in Pack­ag­ing By Design to take place in Hall 7 (booth 432). Anal­o­gous­ly to the theme of the trade fair, it will high­light pack­ag­ing design oppor­tu­ni­ties brought about by tran­si­tion process­es in soci­ety found­ed on con­sumers’ ever-chang­ing behav­iors. Com­pa­nies are being chal­lenged to act sus­tain­ably in terms of ecol­o­gy and cus­tomer reten­tion. In coop­er­a­tion with Nürn­bergMesse, bay­ern design will present the respons­es design­ers and com­pa­nies are mak­ing to these trans­for­ma­tions. Rang­ing from A as in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty through U as in urn to Z as in the zeerooo mul­ti-use sys­tem, the inno­va­tions on dis­play will pro­vide sources of inspi­ra­tion for new trends and impuls­es in the pack­ag­ing indus­try and in soci­ety. In addi­tion to being exhib­it­ed, the pieces will be dis­cussed at a live event at PACKBOX.
Address, Amaze, Advance
Under the key­words ‘Address’, ‘Amaze’ and ‘Advance’ the spe­cial show fea­tures select­ed exam­ples of pack­ag­ing design in which design­ers and com­pa­nies make strate­gic use of pack­ag­ing: as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion or inter­ac­tion, or as a field of appli­ca­tion for sus­tain­able mate­ri­als devel­op­ment. The pack­ag­ing spe­cial­ists see their man­date for redesign as a play­ing field where they rely on cre­ative, tech­ni­cal, and com­mu­nica­tive inno­va­tions to advance sus­tain­abil­i­ty as well as aesthetics.

Address
The pack­ag­ing con­cepts sub­mit­ted by four Mün­ster School of Design stu­dents – Made­line Hesse, Elis­a­beth Freymüller, Fred­er­ic Ven­nemey­er and Jonas Zerr – and by snoop­star address key issues and con­vey them con­vinc­ing­ly. The Mün­ster project address­es the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of ground­wa­ter through the care­less dis­pos­al of cig­a­rette butts. The Input cig­a­rette pack fea­tures a pull-out tray to house butts until they can be dis­posed of prop­er­ly. The Region­ique brand of the Ger­man com­pa­ny Pro­duk­t­fab­rik con­veys envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness through trans­paren­cy: A QR code on each pack­age gives cus­tomers an insight into the pro­duc­tion and sup­ply chains of the respec­tive prod­uct. The con­cept rais­es con­sumer aware­ness of the prob­lem and at the same time pro­vides a prac­ti­cal way to con­tribute to change. How­ev­er, many pack­ag­ing con­cepts do not show their sus­tain­able side at first glance. snoop­star uses aug­ment­ed real­i­ty to make sus­tain­able pack­ag­ing iden­ti­fi­able as such and thus fit for the future.

Advance
Bio-based pack­ag­ing helps advance soci­ety in many ways. Among oth­er advan­tages, it waives the use of envi­ron­men­tal­ly harm­ful Sty­ro­foam for impact-sen­si­tive prod­ucts, the use of dis­pos­able food pack­ag­ing and the use of non-degrad­able mate­ri­als in the man­u­fac­ture of orna­men­tal urns for human remains. In coop­er­a­tion with GROWN bio, Amen Can­dles will present a pro­tec­tive myceli­um (fun­gus roots) and hemp fiber wrap. This all-nat­ur­al pack­ag­ing is used to send Amen’s frag­ile and tem­per­a­ture-sen­si­tive scent­ed can­dles secure­ly around the world. Algae- and plant-based mate­ri­als are used by the British clean­tech com­pa­ny Not­pla to avoid dis­pos­able pack­ag­ing wher­ev­er pos­si­ble. This means the edi­ble pack­ag­ing can sim­ply be swal­lowed along with the drink. When hand-mak­ing orna­men­tal urns from pre­mi­um-qual­i­ty paper, urn­fold focus­es on three things: sus­tain­abil­i­ty, mod­ern aes­thet­ics, and the sup­port of a more per­son­al­ized cul­ture of grief. The paper ful­fills the actu­al pur­pose of orna­men­tal urns because it upgrades the manda­to­ry recep­ta­cle for ash­es opti­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly and it decom­pos­es in the ground com­plete­ly, leav­ing no residue.

Amaze
The pack­ag­ing con­cepts cre­at­ed by design­ers Hélène Fontaine (Burg Giebichen­stein Kun­sthochschule Halle) and Sarah Klein are amaz­ing­ly con­vinc­ing. Most food pack­ag­ing is not user-friend­ly; often tabs are too small and dif­fi­cult to pull and/or impos­si­ble-to-remove lids make han­dling the foods cum­ber­some, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple with phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions. Titled i‑si, Fontaine’s pack­ag­ing dish has a pro­trud­ing base and a foil cov­er with an extend­ed tab. It requires lit­tle force to open – even with just one hand. ReWrap, by Sarah Klein, is an inno­v­a­tive solu­tion for trans­port­ing food-to-go. The flex­i­bil­i­ty of the prod­uct is due to diverse fold­ing and wrap­ping tech­niques. The design of the pack­ag­ing for French fries and sim­i­lar foods resem­bles clas­sic French fries pack­ag­ing, while falafels still are wrapped as usu­al. For effi­cient waste elim­i­na­tion, ReWrap can be reused up to 4000 times and can be offered as part of a refund­able-deposit system.

Oth­er exhibitors at the spe­cial show include Kebag (dön­er pack­ag­ing), out­na­ture (pack­ag­ing made from fibers from the sil­phia plant), Philips Hue smart light­ing (inter­ac­tive pack­ag­ing fea­tur­ing an alter­nat­ing col­ors mech­a­nism), Syn­te­gon (blis­ter meets paper), Van Genecht­en Pack­ag­ing (100% recy­clable choco­late pack­ag­ing PurePac with­out added wrap­ping mate­r­i­al), Vös­lauer (Artists for Tomor­row edi­tion), and zerooo Mehrwegsys­tem (reusable jars and refund­able bottles).

In line with the three cat­e­gories of the spe­cial show, on Wednes­day Sep­tem­ber 28 the speak­ers will focus on pack­ag­ing design as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and inter­ac­tion and as a field of appli­ca­tion for sus­tain­able mate­ri­als devel­op­ment. They will dis­cuss their con­cepts live at PACK­BOX from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. The pack­ag­ing experts Thi­lo Reichert (snoop­star), entre­pre­neur Sabine Bin­gen­heimer (Pro­duk­t­fab­rik), Mar­gaux Deguerre (Head of Mar­ket­ing Not­pla) and founder Kristi­na Stein­hauf (Urn­fold) will speak.

Con­tact
Dr. Kil­ian Steiner
+49 176 45536984
steiner@bayern-design.de