Packaging

A BLACK BOX WITH ITALIAN FLAIR

Wednesday 23. March 2011 - The third black box in Iggesund Paperboard’s international design challenge is being presented in mid-March at an event at Stationers’ Hall in London.

The task was to produce an interesting design that was a challenge not only for the designer but also for Iggesund’s flagship product, Invercote. Andrea Brunazzi of Brunazzi&Associati in Torino, Italy, has created a black box that is the ultimate in Italian style. His solution is a survival kit for pasta lovers. The complete ready meal is packed in bioplastic-coated Invercote Bio and the packaging ultimately functions as a pasta strainer.
“We wanted to do something that had an Italian theme, and what can be more Italian than a meal of pasta,” he said. “It was easy to adapt the idea to the black box, and the concept of making the pasta strainer out of the biodegradable Invercote bio was the perfect final touch.”
The Black Box Project is an initiative from Iggesund Paperboard in which the company challenged a number of leading designers to fill a black box with contents that are both relevant from a design viewpoint and also place tough demands on Invercote. The concept also includes organising exhibitions of the black boxes and their contents in different parts of the world – and with each new box the exhibition also grows.
The first designers to accept the challenge were the packaging specialists in cosmetics and fragrances at Landor, Paris and the maestro of printing techniques, Frans van Heertum of Tilburg in the Netherlands. The free spirits at Landor did what designers so often do – broke all the rules for the commission right from the start.
Their contribution is called “Virtually Real” and is based on the concept that everything we produce can be broken down into pixels. So they thought: why not produce a pixel that people can use to build something with? The result was a Black Box containing a single pixel. The box didn’t create much excitement until it became clear that the creative minds at Landor had not just thought outside the box – they’d also blown it to smithereens.
In addition to the box, Landor’s contribution consisted of four works of art, each made up of 4,900 physical pixels, resulting in four pictures, each 3 x 3 metres in size.
In contrast to Landor’s concept-driven contribution, that of van Heertum Design is clearly technology driven. The company’s grand old man, Frans van Heertum, is all but legendary in the graphics industry for pushing the boundaries of what is possible. He happily combines gravure, offset and screen printing and then adds 34 printing inks and a multitude of varnishes. As if that weren’t enough, he also likes to integrate Swarovski crystals into his design. He is a multiple winner of the Golden Cylinder honorary award from the American Gravure Printing Association.
Opening van Heertum’s black box reveals a highly intricate laser cut construction made from a single sheet of paperboard. The box also contains a number of cards that display a variety of various printing and finishing techniques – ones that most printers and designers can only dream of achieving.
“The next black box will be presented in New York on 16 May,” says Carlo Einarsson, Director of Market Communications at Iggesund Paperboard. “Designer Marc Benhamou – who has a background in the cosmetics industry – will unveil a box whose theme is beauty.”