The award winners addressed single women and people on the move.
Whisky packs in different shapes – one for men and one for women. A smart medical kit for the small household. Elegant packaging solutions for the computer mouse. But the award winners in Frövi’s design competition PIDA had chosen to pack Absolut Vodka and their solution took the jury by storm.
In order to highlight design and its importance, the Swedish government has initiated the project “Designåret (design year) 2005”, where Swedish enterprises are invited to create their own projects focusing on design. AssiDomän Frövi is contributing with the project PIDA “Packaging Impact Design Award”.
For more than ten years Frövi has organised design competitions with students focused on industrial- graphical and packaging design. “With the PIDA-project we have taken a step forward”, says Annica Alexanderson, AssiDomän Frövi.
The brief for the students was to choose a product within the segments Luxury drinks, Chocolate, Beauty care, Pharma or IT/Multimedia. For the chosen product they should then produce two different packaging solutions for two different target groups.
Young people without limitations
Hanna Nylén and Louise Gustafsson from Nackademin had packed their Absolut Vodka in two different ways: Absolut Bärbar (portable) for people on the move and Absolut Single, addressing single girls – and this solution was the one the jury fell for. “Their solution involves great creativity and they have also captured their target groups very well”, says Charlotte Gullberg, AssiDomän Frövi.
Absolut Bärbar has a secondary pack in the shape of a large tetrahedron with a handle and a zip. It contains the primary packs – 15 small pyramid shaped packs each containing 4 cl of vodka flavoured with different tastes. Absolut Single has a secondary pack, designed as a book, which contains the primary packs – six flat liquid packs with vodka. The book also offers important and trivial facts for single girls who enjoy their freedom before they take the step to the next phase in life: Absolut Gift (married).
Torbjörn Edvardsson, teacher at BrobyGrafiska, thought that the competition and prize award ceremony was very inspiring: “PIDA is fantastic for our students and I think that the project has been thoroughly interesting, partly because students don’t have any limitations – for them nothing is impossible. Myself, I have worked in the packaging world for 24 years and I decided in an early stage not to share with them my own limitations built up throughout the years. They have used the trial- and- error method to find out where the boundaries are.
“It is very inspiring to see how young designers think and how they make use of the board material. They are not set in their ways with fixed ideas as us, the established constructors”, says Peter Andersson at Å&R Carton in Norrköping. “We have a lot to learn from each other”.
The PIDA entries were exhibited in July at the design centre in Stockholm – Kulturhuset – and in September at Örebro University. All student works are published on our website.