Trends, mingle and winners at PIDA 2016

Packaging isn’t just packaging anymore. It is rapidly becoming a more and more advanced platform for consumer interaction. Demands are growing. The pack must protect a product, sell a brand, provide consumer information, run smoothly through a logistics chain, and be designed for easy reuse, recycling and recovery. With the age of digitalisation, expectations on the communication and interaction abilities of packaging are growing – which is an interesting field to explore. What is important to communicate? To what purpose? And what interaction brings value to consumers?

– With PIDA, we want to spur creativity and stimulate interest in the future of packaging design. We also want to highlight new, young talents and bring them together with industry operators. The competition is thus an important investment in the development of the industry, says Christophe Delrive, Business Development Director EUM Cartonboard, BillerudKorsnäs.

“PIDA has become an institution, and a tradition. It’s an arena where young talents meet experienced professionals. This is where the future of packaging design takes shape. ”

Jörg Storneke, Business Development Director EUM Cartonboard, BillerudKorsnäs.

Packaging that communicates

Every year, the participants are facing a new challenge based on current trends and a growing need for better packaging. Today, with the “Internet of Things” and constant connectivity, BillerudKorsnäs chose Electronic Connection as the theme for the PIDA 2016 brief.

– New technology enables packaging to communicate with smartphones and tablets, which offers new ways for the consumer to interact with packages and brands. The task for PIDA 2016 was therefore to invite the contestants to create smart, futuristic and technically innovative solutions within the electronics segment, says Elin Li, Business Development Director på Cartonboard BillerudKorsnäs.

Interactive packaging design won PIDA Sweden

The PIDA Sweden event, held at DN-skrapan, was visited by a great number of industry professionals and representatives of the media. Kinna Andersson, Viktor Andersson and Josefine Johansson won the competition with a technically creative packaging design for an oven thermometer. Their packaging concept was based on heat-sensitive ink and communication with an app that displays the temperature and other data.

– The quality of this year’s PIDA entries was consistently high. A clear trend is how strongly the new generation of packaging designers rely on cloud/app connection via smartphones, says Bo Wallteg, the jury’s chairman.

Focus on technological innovations at PIDA France

Hundreds of guests – students, converters, brand owners, media – visited the PIDA France event that was held in Reims in June.

Yoline Gallois, Justine Morval and Angelique Sanson won the French edition of the competition with their technically innovative contribution MOV’UP. The design, conceived for a drone, featured a number of different technologies such as a solar panel, GPS and a QR code.

Space ship won PIDA Germany PIDA Germany became a well-attended event that was held in Stuttgart in November. Nathanael Jetter, Sascha Hermann, Martin Wunner and Viktor Hahnemann won the competition with a package shaped as a space ship, designed for a mini-computer. The concept was based on innovative design and smart solutions. The packaging itself was conceived to function as a platform to use and program the computer directly, by providing a keyboard and a screen for communication.

– What the students succeeded to deliver was really impressing and the quality was high. One big trend we got to see at PIDA Germany was printed electronics in different solutions, says jury chairman Thomas Reissig, Verdesoft.

In summary, the talented packaging design students competing at PIDA 2016 were very innovative and truly challenged what is recognized as conventional packaging. Results were inspiring, intriguing and often unexpected. All in all, a very good PIDA year.