Go inside the box but think outside the box

CG: Gone are the days where a label was slapped on plain and ordinary packaging. Your packaging designs make the product look exciting and inviting. What do you try and achieve through your designs?

Isabela. The goal of packaging design is to turn projects into collectable and saleable items. These ideas translate everything we do and our way to achieve the final result. The objective is to prevent the user from throwing away the packaging and decorate his/ her house with it instead.

CG: What is it that excites you most about packaging design? What are the challenges that you face? Do you decide the fate of packaging design, or is someone else in control?

Isabela. The most exciting aspect of packaging is tactile designing and how it follows a simple function of conserving the product, selling it as well as enchanting the audience. The biggest challenges are the suppliers and the limitations to achieving the result we look for. Frequently, clients that are in the product-testing phase need packaging on a small scale. In that case, one has to migrate to simpler solutions that are available in the label/bottle segment. In this way, working to conciliate innovative and beautiful designs within those limitations enhances a designer's abilities and experience.

CG: Your designs are clean, minimal and follow a discipline, quite contrary to the Brazilian spirit which is known to be loud and colourful! How has Brazil influenced your designs?

Isabela. Brazil is renowned for its colours and aesthetics no doubt. However, the objective here is to try to be a studio with a personal and also global aesthetic. The goal is to fit into each customer's reality and identity.

CG: Packaging design is still an unexplored territory. According to you, what are some of the traits of good packaging? What do you do differently to make your designs stand out?

Isabela. There certainly is a long way yet to go before packaging design becomes a celebrated design field. There is so much more potential for innovation and creation in this field. A good package must conserve the product, have a structure, sell and enchanting too. It's vital to understand that one can't do without the others; there's no use in a beautiful but fragile package or even a rigid one that doesn't show the concept of the product.

CG: And now something we've been dying to ask- why bottles?

Isabela. Why not bottles? Nowadays, many people are creating new products by quitting their conventional jobs, and the beverage industry is the one experiencing this the most. Alcoholic or not, this form of packaging is in constant demand.