Package Design | packagedesignmag.com

(January 2012) posted on Wed Jan 04, 2012

By Linda Casey

• 
• 
• 

These sleek condiment bottles, designed by three students from Birmingham City University, challenge category convention. Upscale ketchup, you betcha! Barbecue sauce that’s more at home in a café than a smokehouse, more please. Mayo that harkens back to its European roots, ooh la la!

These beauties are smart too. Their student designers, Chan Yung Khang, Yoan Dahan and Richard Barnett, built in ergonomic details for easy handling, and they even include a window feature. That pretty strip on the front of the bottle is made from clear plastic so the consumer knows when he or she is getting low on sauce and needs to buy more. The bottle’s small diameter makes it easy to grip for hands both big and small.

Going narrow and tall has other benefits too. There’s plenty of billboard space for branding, and it can be used for a range of sauces of different consistencies.

For the saucy design, Khang, Dahan, and Barnett won Petainer’s 2011 international design contest. The three-student team was awarded a 1,000 Euro prize from Petainer, and they earned bragging rights, as their design beat out entries from the Technical University in Liberec, Czech Republic, and the University of SkÃvde in Sweden.

This is the second time Petainer has run its international design competition, which encourages students to design innovative, sustainable packages that have great shelf appeal and are highly functional. Nigel Pritchard, chief executive of Petainer, was especially impressed by the most recent entries. “I was again incredibly impressed with the quality and high standard of the students’ designs,” he remarks. “Their attention to detail and innovative ideas made judging the competition a challenging and thought-provoking experience.”

Petainer already has announced plans for its third contest to be held later this year.