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A drupa Tour with Brand Packaging Designer Uwe Melichar, EPDA

At drupa, PW tagged along as Uwe Melichar, European Brand and Packaging Design Association president, led a select group of brand owners on a personally curated booth tour. Here's what we found out.

Uwe Melichar (second from right) of the European Brand and Packaging Design Association, curated the private brand owner tour of drupa for Touchpoint Packaging, a pavilion and topical packaging hub of the show.
Uwe Melichar (second from right) of the European Brand and Packaging Design Association, curated the private brand owner tour of drupa for Touchpoint Packaging, a pavilion and topical packaging hub of the show.

Today at drupa, I was fortunate to be a fly on the wall and tag along with a select group of brand owners, including Diageo among others, on a private packaging innovation tour. Part of Messe Dusseldorf's Touchpoint Packaging program, the tour stopped at half dozen cutting-edge and packaging-heavy booths chosen and curated by Uwe Melichar, a VP and past president of the European Brand and Packaging Design Association. 

After the tour, I sat down with Melichar to find out why he took the packaging pros at CPGs to those booths, get his impressions and takeaways of drupa, and learn what's exciting to him in the world of packaging design. Uwe didn't disappoint. 

Packaging World: Tell a little bit about who you are, and your current roles.

Uwe Melichar: I’ve been in the packaging business for more than 28 years now, in different world agency combinations, always responsible, as a partner or something. I’ve always worked internationally. I’ve never had a particular focus on Germany even though I come from Germany, I’m located in Hamburg. My actual status is part of a company [based in the U.K.] called Touch, a structural packaging design company with a strong focus on sustainability. That's exactly what I did before, so when I joined them, it was a perfect match. Now I'm their partner for Europe—Brexit will make things a little bit difficult, but that's what we're doing. We have clients in the U.S., such as Procter and Gamble and PepsiCo. But we also were looking into smaller sized brands around the globe, and in Germany for sure, there are some interesting companies. We make sure that their packaging is getting more sustainable. But also, we're looking into streamlining processes. That's why we are working with Esko or Dalim Software, for example.

How did you get into packaging?

When I decided to study, I was not sure whether it should be graphic design or product design. I decided to go for graphic design. I learned all about communication, communication design, branding. I started my first job in a branding agency. I “took them over” as a partner after three and a half years, or at least became part of [leadership]. But the first time I was confronted with was packaging, I said, ‘Hey, that's it. That's exactly the link between 3D and 2D.’ I was absolutely excited, and I always stick to that. Because it's so exciting to have the three dimensions and, also, the different requirements. It's more than just communication. It's really protecting the product. It's about convenience for customers. It's really close to people. And I love people, I love to talk to people. That's what brought me into packaging, now with Touch.

You have another role outside of Touch, yes?  

Yes, with the EPDA, the European Brand and Packaging Design Association. It’s existed for more than 30 years, so those are some big [shoes to fill]. I had been the president for four years, now I'm the vice president. We are members from across Europe, their packaging agencies or branding agencies. We do two conferences a year that are about inspiration. It's about information. It's also to give us as an industry design voice. And we want to like have discussions all along the value chain from the substrate supplier, be it our friends from Stora Enso or ink suppliers, like Hubergroup, all these people, all the way to the brands. The brand owners, if they want to get inspiration find innovation, go directly to the supplier. And that's wrong. Their suppliers don't lie to them, but they may tell them just the part of the truth, or just a little bit of the scope of what is there. And we as designers, we have a broader view. And maybe we are a little crazy anyway, because our brains work differently. But I can translate something that works well in the tool industry, to the toy industry—or the other way around. I think that’s one of the big chances brands have, if they talk to designers or to design associations. We in these conferences, we have speakers like [Argentinian package design expert Hernán Braberman] that you've seen today, giving us a new perspective. He's a member of EPDA all the way from Argentina. Argentinian package design expert Hernán Braberman gave seven strategies to design packaging and brands to appeal to Gen Z.Argentinian package design expert Hernán Braberman gave seven strategies to design packaging and brands to appeal to Gen Z.

You’ve been at drupa for 10 days now. What’s your biggest takeaway?

The thing that really excites me is what’s happening with digital printing—how it has evolved, the speed, the machines are so much faster. The results, the quality is so much better. The vertical integration, they can print on nearly every surface without priming, it. So really exciting to watch what happens there. Let's see what the economic side says, of course. And then, [large traditional printing] companies like Koenig & Bauer or Heidelberg have digital solutions, and there is so much that’s possible. But then again, I'm not the one investing into machines. I’m just looking at it from a brand owner’s perspective.

I'm always trying to look through the eyes of the brand owners and what they are interested in. They don't want to know how the sheet feed is constructed. They don't want to know how many colors, and this and that. They want to see a result that matches their expectations and want to have a good solution that’s affordable and sustainable. That's their interest. That's how I tried to design the tour today that we went on.

Put a pin in the tour, we’ll get to it shortly. Is there any kind or story arc between drupa 2016 and 2024? A lot has happened in the intervening years.

Well, the world has changed. Looking at 2016, sustainability didn't play a major role in those days. And now you see that technology is evolving even more quickly, with digitalization, with AI components. Technology in this space is becoming the so-called hockey stick. It’s not a linear development, it's really moving fast.

At the same time, there are new demands. For example, let’s take sustainability, or connectivity, whatever it is. The things we are talking about here at Touchpoint Packaging come from the consumers’ mind. Consumers now think paper is the best solution for everything. It's not true. We have look at all these things. The world has changed from 2016. To today. And that is clearly visible here.

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