Business Beat
Designers to Make a Splash at Luxe Pack Monaco
As the Luxe Pack Monaco trade show draws near, eight designers are preparing to compete in the 2005 Monaco Luxe Pack Design Awards. The designers will contend for the competition’s grand prize, to be awarded at the trade show, which takes place November 2–5 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco.
Scott Beckerman, the competition’s finalist from the United States, designed a bottle with an outer sleeve that unwraps in a spiraling manner.
The eight designers are the finalists representing the countries of Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the United States. Each finalist won his country’s semifinal national competition, receiving 2000 euros and a free trip to Monaco for the grand-prize competition. To be eligible for the competition, participants must have worked in the field of design as freelance or full-time designers, with a minimum of one and a maximum of five years of experience.
For this year’s competition, participants were asked to design a luxury water bottle based on the theme Celebration in Monaco. Many of the designers’ concepts can no doubt also be translated to cosmetic packaging.
For the national competitions, designers were asked to submit a drawing of their water bottle designs. The eight finalists chosen for the international competition have been provided with funding to turn their design renderings into an actual physical model, which will be judged by an international panel at the Luxe Pack Monaco trade show. The finalists will also create videos showcasing their design processes and present their designs in person to the panel in Monaco. Judging criteria include concept originality and use of materials, consistency with the specified theme, aesthetic quality, potential for industrialization, and the quality of the candidate’s presentations. The grand-prize winner will receive 10,000 Euros and a trophy.
Scott Beckerman is the finalist representing the United States. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stanford University, where he studied product design. Beckerman has also worked at Nice Ltd., a package design consultancy, primarily designing perfume bottles for brands such as Mont Blanc, Lancôme, and Dunhill.
Beckerman’s design celebrates the act of opening a water bottle. His bottle features a perforated outer sleeve that customers must first unwrap. The perforations are arranged in a spiraling manner, so that customers must unwrap the sleeve in a spiral path. The bottle is also decorated with a spiral design, alluding to the spiraling roads of Monaco’s famous Grand Prix race.
“Because this contest did not [impose] the normal cost restrictions of a mass-produced bottle, I had the unusual freedom to create not just a simple, beautiful vessel, but one that addresses the experience of the product,” says Beckerman. “Drinking water is not something we normally celebrate, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. I wanted to make a bottle that was more like a sculpture. Although it is easy to use, this design is not about ease or utility. In fact, it should encourage you to slow down and appreciate your water, your meal, and your life. It is about creating a small ritual of extravagance to match the opulence and pleasure of Monaco.”
Marcel Oeltjendiers is the finalist from Germany. He designed a water bottle with a unique dispensing feature. Instead of a standard removable cap, Oeltjendiers’s design requires users to press the bottle’s neck to activate a valve that allows water to pour out of the bottle.
The UK finalist, Lewis MacIntyre, designed a flint-glass bottle with a rounded bottom representing the bottom of a water droplet. The bottle’s pointed cap is made from frosted glass and aluminum. “The [bottle’s] shape is that of an elongated water droplet,” says MacIntyre. “The bottle intentionally has no base. It must be either suspended by its cap, which is specially designed, or held in ice or in a specially crafted bar or tabletop display.”
Inspired by the boats in Monaco’s harbor, Eugenio Fainer Tonon, the Brazilian finalist, designed a curved, triangular bottle representing a regatta. Tonon said that he envisions the material best suited to the design would be Eastman Chemical’s Glass Polymer resin. “The material I am aiming at is the Glass Polymer developed by Eastman, [because it’s] a polymer that aesthetically seems as competent as glass, but surpasses glass in ease of modeling and decoration,” he says.
For his design, Spanish finalist Rubén Piquer was inspired by an amphora, a Mediterranean jar with a narrow neck used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to carry or preserve liquids such as wine or oil. “Reviving [the amphora’s] shape would bring us a bit closer to our roots,” says Piquer. “The material I propose is entirely recyclable, transparent crystal. An opaque seal completely covers the bottle, which prevents ultraviolet rays from changing the quality of the water and keeps the stopper and the container closed. [It also] guarantees that the container is used only once, since once the seal is broken, the stopper cannot be reattached to the bottle.”
French finalist Michaël Radix designed a bottle with a stopper that users must break off in order to open. “For an event to be memorable, it must be accompanied by a unique action—an irreversible and symbolic action that marks the moment indelibly in our memory,” he says. “I wanted the opening [of the bottle] to be accompanied by a symbolic gesture.”
Francesco Mansueto, the Italian finalist, fashioned a bottle that can be dressed in various decorative coverings. According to Mansueto’s description, “the bottle is a sophisticated design that allows for the quick adaptation of the bottle’s dressing according to the business, social, or other occasion.” The bottle itself is made from clear glass. Various rubber “skins” are designed for the bottle, which provide users with a secure grip and the bottle with a stylish look.
The finalist from Japan, Ghassan George Baghdadi, designed a bottle with flowing contours. According to his description, “the bottle’s shape reflects the flow in springtime of the melting of natural spring water.” The egg-shaped cap acts as a stopper for the bottle. Baghdadi says that the cap’s surface can be coated in silicone to ensure that it seals tightly onto the bottle. He also suggests replacing the cap with a chocolate egg or a crystal for a marketer’s special promotion.
The designs of the eight finalists will be on display during Luxe Pack Monaco in the forum’s Verrier Hall. The finalists’ presentation and awards ceremony will take place at the show on Friday, November 4, starting at 2:30 p.m.
NatureWorks Invests in Environment
NatureWorks LLC is an environmentally friendly company that was the first to offer a family of commercially available polymers derived 100% from annually renewable resources. To create its products, the company uses unique technology for processing natural plant sugars to create proprietary polylactide polymers, which it markets under the names NatureWorks PLA and Ingeo. The company recently announced plans to go a step further by buying back from recyclers postconsumer bottles made from NatureWorks PLA materials.
The firm announced this plan at the National Recycling Convention held August 29 in Minneapolis. Through the buy-back program, commercial Municipal Recycling Facilities in geographic areas would separate postconsumer PLA bottles into distinct PLA bales. NatureWorks LLC will buy back these bales at an agreed-upon price and route them to an appropriate end-of-life solution and/or postconsumer use.
“This program is the first step toward a commercially viable postconsumer market for NatureWorks PLA,” said Glenn Johnston, manager, global regulatory affairs, at NatureWorks LLC. “In addition, as part of our commitment to environmental responsibility, we will continue to work with representatives of the plastics recycling industry to study the handling of postconsumer PLA in mixed-plastic streams, and provide more waste-diversion options as they become available.”
Pira Focuses on Luxury
Pira International, a consultancy company for the printing, packaging, publishing, and paper industries, announced a two-day conference focusing on luxury packaging. The event will be held November 28–29 at the Thistle Hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The presentations will be divided into five sessions: markets for luxury packaging; consumer perceptions on luxury packaging; design trends for luxury packaging; production considerations for luxury packaging; and material considerations for luxury packaging. Case studies illustrating successful applications of luxury packaging in the marketplace will also be featured.
According to Pira, the conference will include speakers from 20 leading companies, including Unilever and Procter & Gamble. For more information on the event, visit www.piranet.com.