Packaging is the ultimate vehicle for design: industrial, graphic, and typographic design are all put to the test to create an impression so meaningful that it converts currency into consumerism. This ...
Could there a contemporary superstar with more glamour or charisma than Beyoncé Knowles? That’s for pop fandom to debate. What’s clear is that the singer’s sheer star power has been successfully translated into a high-end packaging concept for Beyoncé Pulse.
The perfume was created for the Beyoncé brand by Coty (New York). Philip Tarrant, senior engineer for packaging development at Coty, describes the main design elements as modeling Beyoncé’s stage accoutrements. Thus the package is more than just a delivery system for a fragrance—it also serves as an icon of its namesake at her most radiant moments in performance.
A striking silver overcap (or “shroud”) encloses the bottle to mimic the way the star’s shimmery ball gowns envelop her figure. The dazzling holographic effects on the carton reproduce, in miniature, the movement and energy of the laser light shows that often signal her entrance.
The package design aims to be different from every other perfume container on the market—an objective achieved by surrounding an extraordinary bottle with an equally distinctive carton that dramatically pushes the technique of printable holography to a new level of visual flair.
Like her, a showpiece
The result, says Tarrant, is exactly what Beyoncé wanted as a vehicle for the latest addition to her branded line of fragrances: a package that her female fans can display with pride on their vanities and dressing tables.
Beyoncé Pulse joined the line, which also includes the perfumes Beyoncé Heat and Beyoncé Heat Rush, in August. The launch, preceded by about 12 months of development, was a collaborative effort that combined the talents of Coty’s internal packaging group; the outside expertise of Lance McGregor, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based product designer and “visual futurist”; and guidance from the celebrity herself.
“Beyoncé was pivotal in supplying the inspirational references for the bottle design direction,” McGregor says. “She also played a major role in editing my designs and offering her own aesthetic opinion. I wanted to reflect this in the design, so I took a nontraditional approach.”
With its cut-crystal appearance and silvery shroud, the elegant bottle literally turns the usual concept of perfume container design on its head. The bottle is inverted within the shroud, which serves as an overcap that conceals the pump from view. In this way, says McGregor, “I focused on it being dramatic, unexpected, and avant garde, with a more sculptural, artistic expression.”
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