2011 December | Sunrise Packaging Blog

Archive for December, 2011

Rare Honey Shows that Every Drop is Valuable with Unique Packaging

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Packaging is an essential ingredient in determining how well a product sells. With this ingredient in mind, De Hortus Bontanicus Amsterdam recently unveiled a new package design for their rare De Hortus Honey; only 200 pots of this honey are made a year! The honey is made in their own botanical gardens, which is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world today. Made by the bees in their garden, the honey has a unique taste, which is exemplified in the distinctive design of the custom packaging.

Designers of the packaging, PHontwerp, explain,

“Every drop of this rare honey captures the taste of an amazing amount of different flowers from all over the world. For 1 pot of this honey, the bees need to make 2.000.000 visits to various flowers. Every drop is valuable! We wanted to capture this essence into a graphic representation of a honey drop. The cut out shape in the outer box leads to an inner shape that actually holds the ball shaped honey pot. Every year the colour and transparency of the honey is different. We want to show it to the buyers of the honey. Who definitely want to see and enjoy it. That is why we made a design that enables the light to go through the packaging from two sides. A true gift.”

Tags:Custom Packaging Products, honey, packaging
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Drama Mounts with Coca-Cola’s New Packaging

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Last month, we blogged about Coca-Cola changing their packaging for the first time ever in a cause marketing effort to protect the Arctic home of polar bears. Check out the blog here.

Apparently that wasn’t such a great idea for Coke. In fact, they’re pulling the plug on the new white cans and changing them back to their original red. Why you ask? Customer uproar. That’s right, customers were getting the white cans confused with the silver Diet Coke cans. We all know how traumatic that can be to think you’re buying an ice cold can of refreshing Coke only to crack it open, take a sip, and taste that dreadful fake Diet Coke flavor. Ok, I’m being facetious.

Whether you think it’s ridiculous or not, you could argue that Coca-Cola should’ve thought this one through a bit more. Knowing your customers is rule number one when changing old traditions.

Why white cans? The company claimed it had intended a “disruptive” campaign to get its conservation message across. Within a few days, Coca-Cola started receiving complaints that the white cans were too easily confused with the silver Diet Coke cans, leading some weight-conscious and diabetic customers to accidentally purchase Coke instead of Diet Coke. Ok, point taken. I could see where that could get sketchy.

Coca-Cola was no stranger to polar bears and WWF – the company has supported WWF Arctic research and conservation efforts in the past and this campaign was supposed to take its commitment to a new level. Coca-Cola has pledged $2 million to help fund the creation of a safe refuge for polar bears and agreed to match up to $1 million of consumer donations made through Arctic Home by March 15, 2012.

Coca-Cola got the message and despite the fact it planned initially to have 1.4 billion white cans available until March, the company decided to halt further production of the cans. As we speak, Coca-cola is sending millions of red cans back into shops with polar bear images on them.

Tags:Arctic, cause marketing, coca-cola, coke, packaging, polar bears, soda
Posted in Eco-Friendly, Marketing, Packaging Design | No Comments »

Contact Lenses- Computers of the Future

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Now stay with me here……the future of computers may well be in contact lenses?! Yes, that picture above that you see is exactly what it seems. Okay, I’ll explain.

A team from Washington University recently completed trials on a new generation of contact lenses that would project your emails directly onto your eyeballs. Circuits in the lenses are made from layers of metal only a few nanometres thick and feature light-emitting diodes measuring 1/3 of a millimeter across.

The next step is to incorporate hundreds of pixels into the lens. The team believes they can eventually produce complex holographic images and price comparison information just by looking at a specific product. Speculation that we’ll be able to stream web content using contact lenses is also on the table.

There are some major challenges however. One, they have to make the contacts as comfortable as normal ones currently on the market. That pretty much means they have to feel like nothing is in your eye. More challenges include powering these contacts. They are currently without a viable power source and the current prototype only works if it’s within centimeters of a wireless battery. Lastly, there may be uncertain long-term effects of wearing a lens made of electrical circuits that is touching the surface of your eye. Imagine wearing these contacts in the scorching heat?

Very interesting ambitions. I’m still kind of speechless to be quite honest. As a person that wears contact lenses all day, everday, I really haven’t the slightest interest at this point.

Tags:circuits, computer, contact lenses, email, eye, internet
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Unconventional Wine & Spirits Packaging

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Packaging has been the focus in recent years for the wine and spirits industry. The increasing popularity amongst a younger demographic (especially wine) has led to more competition. Thus, packaging that stands out on the shelves is a major advantage. Packaging designers are striving to do things a little less conventional while making the packaging memorable and creating a positive perception for the consumer.

In the case of wine packaging, it started with the label on the bottle itself. Over the past decade, wine’s popularity has increased quite a bit and wine enthusiasts are becoming younger and younger. So it’s only fitting that the wine labels are going to be designed to appeal to its target market. While wine packaging has increasingly become more colorful, fun, and vibrant, designers have been taking it a step further using unconventional methods to etch their packaging and experience into the consumer’s memory. Below are a few examples of wine and spirits packaging that are doing just that.

Tags:Marketing, packaging, Packaging Design, spirits, vodka, wine
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ALL Plastic Packaging to be Recycled by 2020?

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

The European Association of Plastics Recycling and Recovery Organization (EPRO) has recently backed claims of the possibility that ALL plastic packaging could be recycled by 2020. That means no more plastic in landfills which is an incredibly ambitious hope. The number of plastic that ends up in landfills across the globe each day is astronomical.

Right now in Europe, approximately 66% of plastic packaging is recycled with one-third of plastic packaging still going to landfill.

EPRO said in a statement: “A recovery rate of 100 per cent in 2020 for both plastic packaging and all other plastic waste is still possible; it is all about willingness and working together across the plastics supply chain to set the scene and move the agenda forward.”

Could this initiative also help the economy? “A strategy of 100% recovery of plastic waste might also contribute to an economic recovery of Europe and thus more jobs.”

In EPRO’s report, the following 16 nations recycled more than 30% of its plastic packaging waste in 2010: Sweden, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, Slovakia, Switzerland, Italy, Latvia, Slovenia, Poland, UK and Lithuania.

At the other end of the list, countries recycling less than 22.5 per cent of their post-consumer plastic packaging were: Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Greece and Malta.

Tags:Europe, landfill, PET, plastic packaging, PVC, recycling
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