Finicky in Finland

by Ian Jarvela-Rooney

Finns Take Pride in Their Recycling Programs and No-Nonsense Designs

The Battery energy drink brand is typical of the Finn's straight-talking, non-fussy approach to communication design, which is an extension of how Finns communicate in the culture as a whole.

Finland is just starting to wake up to the idea that with a little help from packaging their products are not just looking good but selling better internationally. Still, when it comes to packaging, the Finns have two major concerns: 1) Can you recycle it? 2) Can you improve it with technology?

Packaging is said to be highly cultural. Still, it is not until you move to another country that this fact really slaps you in the face. As a non-Finnish speaking person, I may miss some cultural subtleties that Finnish packaging offers. I took similar subtleties for granted in the packaging in Ireland and the U.K. when I lived there. I miss reading clever copy and instantly understanding semantic visual clues.

Though I am learning the Finnish language, from a design perspective I am learning another visual language as well. Every piece of packaging has a narrative in a cultural visual language, and it is this visual language that has made me understand Finns and their culture better.

After living in Finland for six years (on and off), there is one aspect of packaging in Finland that is clear to me. The Finnish recycling system is inescapable. It starts at home where the rubbish is divided into two different bins. Even more bins can be found in communal yards, where paper, cardboard, batteries, food, and mixed rubbish each have a place of their own. It is a staggering statistic that around 98% of all plastic and glass bottles are recycled and refilled from 20 to 30 times. There are 8,000 bottle recycling return points in Finland.

It is no surprise that Finland's packaging waste is the lowest per capita in Europe. Finnish produce on average around 180 lbs. (82 kg) per person per year, whereas Sweden produces 240 lbs. (109 kg), Denmark 350 lbs. (161 kg), Germany 375 lbs. (170 kg), and France 430 (198 kg). All this is very impressive, but it also makes me nervous about getting it right. I am still having problems deciding which bin to use and I have not been brave enough to use a bottle return point yet.

Naturally, the government has played important role in getting people and companies interested in recycling. A packaging tax is levied on the packaging of alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. The purpose of the tax is to reduce the use of disposable packaging, reduce the amount of waste, and reduce the accumulation of litter. If the producer or importer has a system under which the packaging of alcoholic beverages and soft drinks can be returned against a deposit and the packaging can be refilled, the tax need not be paid.

How Finns relax

The Finnish recycling system tells you a lot about Finnish culture, values, and thinking, and especially about their relationship with nature and environment. But an equally strong relationship in Finland is that between saunas and beer. In a country with only five million inhabitants, there are about two million saunas. Now, for some, stripping naked in front of strangers, walking into a heated room of 140° to 210° F (60° to 100° C) and then placing yourself in a hole in a frozen lake doesn't sound like fun, or even a good way to relax. As I have found, those who feel this way are sadly mistaken.

There is something special and magical about enjoying a traditional wood burning sauna and a cold beer in a glass bottle; however, the Finnish breweries and the Finnish government plan to give up glass bottles in favor of plastic bottles and aluminium cans. This is quite disappointing from a traditionalist's perspective. Like every Finn, I have so many sauna-related questions: Is my plastic bottle or aluminum can going to keep my beer cold enough? Will I get third degree burns from aluminum cans? Will my favorite beers taste the same? What are the Finns going to do with all their collections of bottle openers?

Finland's waste/recycling system is top-notch. Juice is almost always contained in cardboard instead of glass because glass is more expensive, less environmentally-friendly, and heavier to distribute.

A bottle of beer and a sauna go hand-in-hand in Finland, but breweries and the Finnish government are considering phasing out bottled beer completely.

I really do believe that the heavier glass bottle makes the sauna and beer experience seem so much more valuable. For a similar value reason, Finland is going to choose plastic. Glass bottles are more expensive, less environmentally friendly, and considerably heavier to distribute. I am a little heartbroken of the thought of losing that sauna and glass bottle experience, yet most Finnish consumers are more interested how plastic will fit into their already effective recycling system.

Embracing technology

The Finnish people embrace technology and accept new innovations quickly as a part of their daily lives. Consumers here already pay bills, manage house security and heating systems, purchase drinks from vending machines, and buy cinema and subway tickets with their mobile phones. Smart packaging and labels are also already a reality.

At the moment, some Finnish beer bottles have labels that Edita Label has produced using the Thermoprint method. These labels indicate when the beer is cold enough to drink. In the future, hidden microchips in labels will communicate price and product information, and may one day give ovens instructions on how to prepare the enclosed food.

The Technical Research Centre of Finland is further investigating the possibilities of smart packaging. Packaging could communicate the quality of the content and the integrity of the package. Or packaging could warn the consumer when the contents of the package are about to be spoiled. These ideas would seem so far fetched back in the U.K., but here in Finland you really do believe anything is possible because consumers are so open to new innovations.

These examples highlight the Finns' pragmatic relationship with product innovation. Finland educates more engineers per capita than any other country in the world. Consequently, people tend to think that if a product is good, it should speak for itself. Finland is part of the famous Scandinavian design cluster, too. The love for good design is seen many places, materializing in furniture design, in ceramics and glassware, in architecture, and—more recently—in electronic products from Nokia and in fabrics from Marimekko.

Packaging as a design discipline, however, is a relatively new idea. It seems that only lately Finns have started to realize that having good products is not enough. Packaging is starting to move from being an afterthought to being an integral part of the product development process. Needless to say, there certainly have been some great examples of creative packaging design in Finland, yet they seem surprisingly few and far between. The packaging design industry in some ways is still in its infancy, especially packaging design as a vital marketing tool.

The Finnish revere the classic Salmiakki candy package, which has not changed since the 1960s.

My two favorite examples of great Finnish package design are the Super Salmiakki, a piece of packaging that holds salty black candy, which is a traditional Finnish sweet. The package is considered as a classic because it has remained unchanged since the '60s. The much newer Battery energy drink is a modern classic package that has had some considerable success as a brand inside Finland.

The Finns on the whole rarely appreciate or enjoy small talk the same way Americans or the British do. Finns don't talk if they have nothing to say. The graphics on both the Salmiakki and Battery packages are great examples of this Finnish straight-talking, non-fussy approach to communication design.

Apart from Nokia, in fact, it is hard to pinpoint another well-known Finnish brand. You cannot help feeling that the nation as a whole could do with repositioning itself. So much is happening here, yet very few people around the world seem to know about it. What makes Finnish culture interesting is that people are humble, reliable, and non-aggressive. This is also the best way to describe their packaging. Unfortunately, those attributes do not get local products noticed internationally when compared to established global brands.

Sweden's successful branding has made Swedish companies recognized internationally, even though products are no better than Finnish products. Comparing the Finns to the Swedes is probably the best way to get Finns motivated, which makes for healthy competition.

The Finnish government has already started up a national campaign to make Finnish design better, more powerful, and more profitable in all levels and areas. So, Sweden and the rest of the world would do well to look up and take notice once in a while. Ever-growing confidence in Finnish packaging design is offering new business opportunities and giving some sectors a new competitive lease on life.

Things are changing in Finland, and packaging design students are at the forefront of educating the industry about the true commercial value of packaging. The Lahti Institute of Design is one of Finland's leading institutes, and it has the only packaging design curriculum in the country. Only 12 packaging designers graduate from this department every year. The demand for these students and their skills is high, and students are being headhunted in their second year of a four-year program. Nearly every day, the department has requests from businesses asking for support and ideas. Advertisement agencies are taking on a lot of the packaging design work, even though they lack the skills that are needed.

New, young packaging designers in Finland are waiting to prove themselves. They are aware of the opportunities that lay ahead. Packaging design in Finland has not yet established itself as a respected design discipline, but businesses are starting to understand that it is very much needed, especially in a competitive international environment.

Ian Jarvela-Rooney is a Branding and Packaging Design Consultant and Lecturer at the Lahti Institute of Design, Faculty of Design. Ian can be reached at ian@irooney.com or on +358 4041-360-77.