Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Personal Care
The healing garden
Organics Wild Honey Collection
by Coty Beauty
The healing garden Organics Wild Honey Collection by Coty Beauty is a certified-organic product line sold in mass-market outlets. The line’s packaging incorporates vintage design elements that are meant to be reminiscent of old-fashioned apothecary packaging.
The packaging was designed by Coty’s team, which included Jane Tarallo, senior global creative director; Jaime Poluan, art director; and Michelle Badalich, a freelance package designer.
Producing the labels was a huge challenge for Coty’s package development team. The single-layer polypropylene labels replicate the look of aged, weathered paper—and they even feel like paper. “We used a satiny, matte finish to give the labels an organic look,” says Michael Gabry, technical package engineer for Coty. The labels are supplied by Interstate Packaging, which was instrumental in their development. “The labels definitely give these packages more of a natural, organic look. They did a good job,” says Henry Renella, awards panelist and vice president of package development for The Estée Lauder Companies.
The line’s bottles are made from amber-colored PET. “Part of the reason for the amber color was because organic ingredients can be unstable,” says Gabry. One problem with organic raw materials is that their natural color has a tendency to shift when exposed to light. “The amber color acts as a natural UV inhibitor and prevents this from happening,” Gabry explains.
A stock cap was found for the 8-oz bottles, which contain shower gel and body lotion. The black dispensing cap has a flip-top design. The bottles, supplied by Graham Packaging, were customized with a special neck finish in order to fit this cap. Because the line is sold at a low price point, custom caps weren’t an option. “It would have been more costly to create a new cap rather than a new bottle,” says James Bautista, senior manager, technical package development for Coty.
The cap is supplied by Zeller Plastik and was chosen mainly for its aesthetics. However, the cap also has environmental benefits. The unusual cutaway front was originally intended to lower its gram weight in order to comply with Europe’s strict recycling laws. “Taxes are charged in Europe according to the weight of a package to try to discourage the use of extra materials,” explains Bautista.
The bar soap and its label are supplied by TwinCraft. The body scrub jar is supplied by Continental Packaging Solutions. The body mist is packaged in a 6-oz stock bottle supplied by Silgan Plastics.
Hangtags secured by raffia bows are an extra touch that really makes the line stand out on shelves. “The raffia makes me feel that everything was hand-touched in some way, which is nice,” says Maiken Erstad, awards panelist and design director for Dragon Rouge.
It took about nine months to launch the collection. “Timing was definitely a challenging factor,” says Gabry.
Bautista adds, “It was especially tough to maintain a consistent look throughout all of the primary and secondary packages, which were obtained from different suppliers.” The final result seems to have been well worth the effort.