“Packagings reqmarquables”: phase one

CHOOSING TO IMPROVE The selection of the “most significant” packaging available on the market, carried out by students enrolled in the Packaging Design master’s degree program (School of Design, Politecnico di Milano). The next step: re-visiting the packaging systems and presenting proposals for their improvement, to be judged by experts in the sector during the Emballage fair. By Erik Ciravegna

Organized by Comexposium, the next edition of the Salon International de l’Emballage, the international packaging showcase, will be held in Paris Nord Villepinte from November 19th to November 22nd, 2012.
This edition of the Parisian fair (the last one was in 2010) will also feature the event “Packagings et Alternatives Remarquables”, organized by the Strate Collège of Paris in collaboration with universities and schools of design selected to represent the packaging project internationally. The countries involved, in addition to France, are Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Italy will be represented by the Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design, with a group of master’s students enrolled in the Packaging Design degree course, coordinated by Valeria Bucchetti and Erik Ciravegna.

The program and work criteria. Work will be performed in two phases and presented at the fair in November.
For the first phase, which has recently come to a close, Strate Collège asked each of the schools involved to identify, for its own country, the packaging types considered most important among those currently on the market.There are many criteria for identifying the “Packagings Remarquables”, and these have to do with different aspects of a selection’s design, from communication properties to use function, from service content to environmental implications (see the table/legend with an explanation of the different criteria). Each packaging selected has been analyzed according to these parameters and cataloged with assessment cards displayed alongside the article.
For each of the six product type categories represented at the fair (Beauty, Beverages & Liquids, Food, Health, Luxury, Multi Industry), three important packaging types have been selected, for a total of 18 products.

For the second phase, the various work groups have been invited to propose some “Alternatives Remarqables” to the selected packaging, that is to design, starting from the existing solution, some alternative solutions characterized by some elements of innovation and originality, in order to propose six designs, one for each product category. A jury made up of professionals and experts in the sector will award the best design among those presented by each university and school and will nominate the best “Alternative Remarquable” of the year.
The next issue of ItaliaImballaggio will feature the designs developed in the Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design Packaging Design Course, and among these, the “Alternatives Remarquables” to be presented at the fair in Paris.                                       

The “Italian” picks: the how and the why of the 18 “packagings remarquables”

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In the legend, established by the Parisian Strate Collége the criteria followed for choosing the packaging: quality of the natural resources used, communicative quality and functionality, size of  service, implications in environmental terms. Each listing is awarded a score, as shown by the number of asterisks on the graph for each pack.