Package design entries in the 1998 Mobius Awards competition, which honors package design, print ads, and TV and radio commercials, were up 38% from the previous year. In fact, there were more package design entries in the 28th-annual Mobius competition than ever before.
Three of the winners are shown here, two from Toronto-based Loblaw Brands and one from Newby Teas of London, England.
The two Loblaw winners were President's Choice Ultra Laundry Detergent and President's Choice Smoked Salmon Ring. Both were designed in-house, and both won first place awards.
Natalie Gooding, design assistant at Loblaw, says the folding carton for laundry detergent was redesigned due to soft sales. "The line had been weak for years and the margins thinner and thinner," says Gooding. Loblaw decided to go with a design that would evoke excitement about cleaning. "The centrifugal spinning ball is a symbolic representation of what a detergent crystal might look like somewhere deep in the wash cycle at full tilt," she says.
The paperboard carton is clay-coated newsback printed offset in four colors. The carton is made and printed by Lawson Mardon Packaging (London, Ontario, Canada). The product is available throughout Canada and retails for about C$4.99 (U.S.$3.29).
The salmon ring is a new product for Loblaw and has no real competition in the marketplace. Because of this, Loblaw elected to show the product in its entirety on the front of the paperboard carton.
The material is clay-coated newsback printed offset in four colors. The folding carton is made and printed by Somerville Packaging (Scarborough, Ontario, Canada). The product is available throughout Canada and retails for C$9.99 (U.S. $6.59).
Tea time
Design studio Pearlfisher (London, England) won a Mobius for its design of the Newby Teas Premier product line. Newby marketers wanted to create a name and a graphic identity to re-establish Newby as tea specialists in the United Kingdom. Pearlfisher worked on Newby's entire line of teas. The company wanted to give individuality to each range while retaining a cohesive look across the brand.
"We consider our Premier teas to be a selection of the finest teas from around the world," says Ardash Sethia, managing director at Newby Teas. "The design needed to communicate this to an audience as yet unaccustomed to teas of this caliber. The new packaging has allowed us to achieve this goal."
Pearlfisher came up with a "checkerboard" design that Newby thinks is distinctive, instantly recognizable and "ownable." They used rich cream tones and dramatic color to suggest the premium quality of the teas, which retail for about £10.00 (U.S.$16.00). The teas are packaged in a three-piece, tin-plate canister with an embossed lid. Carnaud Metal Box (Rock Valley, Mansfield, U.K.) manufactures the tins, which sport a wraparound, self-adhesive label. Amberly Adhesive Labels (Blamford, Dorset, U.K.) used a gloss paper that is offset-printed in three colors. Gold embossing and hot-foil stamping add to the elegance.
Newby recently expanded the line of teas into the U.S. and Japan, and the firm is confident the design will make them a success in these and other markets. "Since the introduction of the new design, we have experienced a strong, positive response from our existing customers and seen a substantial increase in leads and sales from new clients," says Sethia.
