Page 32 - Packaging News May-June 2021

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COVER STORY www.packagingnews.com.au | May-June 2021
Embossed packaging: layers of
Whether a product is successful in the market often has much to do with its packaging design. Embossed packaging, which appeals to the sense of touch, is currently in vogue. To find out why, and what brand owners should know about embossed decoration, PKN spoke to Stephen Pratt, managing director at Kurz Australia, a specialist in surface finishing.
Today, creating a memorable brand experience is not only about visual impact, it’s also about sensory appeal. How can brandowners keep pace with changing demands?
The packaging industry has to con- stantly adapt to new social and design trends, and we’ve been attuned to this for a long time. In order to keep abreast of the latest trends in design, Kurz employs a team at our HQ in Germany who look closely at international design trends every year and from their analysis derive new colours and decors for surface embellishment, among other things. So, we are fully aware that packaging today needs to appeal to multiple senses, and our trend research helps us to keep our customers ahead of the demand curve.
How does Kurz put these trends into practice?
Design research and the development of new products for hot stamping technology go hand in hand at Kurz. From the design trends the team
identifies, they don’t just develop new colours and decors for surface embellishment, every year they pres- ent to the market how these new design trends can be translated into packaging. A good example is the ‘Box next to Box’ packaging concept. In 2021, ‘Box next to Box. Two’ con- sists of four decorated boxes. Each box represents a dominant design trend in colour, motif and presenta- tion. These representations show how modern packaging designs can appeal to all the senses. It’s no longer just about seeing, brands should also be tactile and physically tangible.
And how do designers build tactile features into their designs so customers can ‘feel’ the surface, so to speak?
In the current trend boxes, the box ‘HERfection depicts more power to tenderness’ shows how brand owners can implement more sensuality in their packaging design. It encapsu- lates female energy, togetherness and
ABOVE: The current design collection from Leonhard Kurz contains four trend boxes. Each of them represents a design trend and has been finished with the colours and designs developed for hot stamping.
empathy. And it is here that touching and feeling the packaging plays an important role. If you run your fin- gers over its embossed surface, you can feel fine microstructures, con- cise elevations and channels that are created using stamping and embel- lishing tools.
A key goal of packaging design is to make products even more visible and attractive at the point of sale. Packaging that seduces the consumer to touch it succeeds better than pack- aging that relies exclusively on visual effects. This is one reason why the HERfection trend box plays with both visual and haptic stimuli. For the fem- inine theme of HERfection, a matte gold and a velvety turquoise shade were created. In total, eight new colours for ‘Box next to Box. Two’ emerged from the 2021 short trend research. The embellishment of the trend box was achieved with stamp- ing dies used for the hot-stamping decoration of the trend box came from Kurz subsidiary H+M.