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Japan’s 2027 Packaging Design Award
Japan has a rich history of packaging design that dates back hundreds of years and rooted in a tradition of gift-giving. Before industrial materials like plastic and cardboard, gifts were wrapped in straw, bamboo, leaves and paper: an art unto itself that lives on today in the form of products wrapped in as many physical as symbolic layers.
Every two years the JPDA (Japan Packaging Design Association) combs through over 1000 submissions to celebrate excellence in packaging design. Here are the winners for 2027.
Grand Prize
Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Store Shopping Bags
The top prize went to creative director Haruka Misawa, of the Nippon Design Institute, for her shopping bags created as part of a new visual identity for Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores. More than 300 years after their founding, Daimaru and Matsuzakaya continue to share a common set of values, while their 15 stores across Japan have each developed a distinct regional character as a store “without a flagship.”
In response, Misawa created and coined hyakuyozu (百様図), a visual langauge formed simply by layering sheets of colored paper with circular and square cutouts. Within these overlapping shapes, endless patterns emerge. Move just one sheet and the entire composition transforms. After layering the paper by hand, resulting compositions were photographed and translated into shopping bags.
When Carl Lindgren died in Tucson in March, his family sorted out the house, the truck and the fishing boat in about a week. Nobody wanted Otto.
Otto had been Carl's shadow for 12 years, a bloodhound with ears like dish towels and bad hips. Carl's sons both lived in apartments. Otto went to the county shelter with a note on his file asking for an extra week, and a niece called the one person she thought might answer.
Herb Lindgren is Carl's older brother. He lives alone outside Salina, Kansas, about 1,100 miles away, and he'd turned 84 in January. His daughter told him flat out he wasn't driving to Arizona. He'd had cataract surgery in the fall and only drove in daylight.
Herb called the shelter that afternoon. The woman who answered said Otto had stopped eating and spent most of the day lying with his nose against the kennel door. Herb asked her to hold him until Saturday.
He left Wednesday morning in his 1999 Ford pickup with a quilt folded on the passenger seat. Herb drove only while the sun was up and stopped every two hours to walk around the truck. He spent the nights in motels in Amarillo and Albuquerque.
He'd only seen Otto a couple of times a year, at Christmas and on fishing trips. Everybody in the family had always said the brothers sounded exactly alike on the phone.
At the shelter a kennel worker walked Herb back to the last run. Otto was lying against the door with his eyes closed. Herb crouched down as far as his knees allowed and said, "Hey, old man."
Otto's head came up. He got to his feet on those bad hips and let out a long bloodhound bay that brought two other staff members out of the office.
The shelter waived the fee. Out in the parking lot Herb opened the passenger door, and Otto tried twice to climb in before Herb got his arms under the dog's back end and helped him up onto the quilt.
Herb drove the 1,100 miles home the same way, in daylight, with Otto's chin on the armrest between the seats. Somewhere in New Mexico he started telling the dog stories about Carl. He told the one about the ice-fishing house that sank and the one about the Buick they wrecked in 1958, and he kept going until Kansas.
Otto sleeps on the rug beside Herb's recliner now. Herb has kept paying for Carl's old cell phone so the voicemail still works. Some nights he calls it and puts it on speaker, and Otto lifts his head at the sound of the voice.
Just because ...
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| Bearded Reedling |
Wednesday's Smiles ...
Hoping you feel all the good things in your day.
