Stora Enso : The story of Pivert Champagne by Micaela Nilsson, the Recreate Packaging 2016 winner

Micaela Nilsson works as a structural designer for Gafs Kartong, in Sweden. She won the professional category of Stora Enso Recreate Packaging 2016 with her design called Pivert Champagne. This is what she told us about her design.

'Gafs Kartong has always been at the forefront when it comes to new technology and has recently invested in Highcon, a digital cutting and creasing machine which uses laser technology. This was something we wanted to highlight in our contribution to the Recreate Packaging 2016 competition. In my daily work I'm responsible for structural packaging design and I work in close cooperation with the sales and the production line to ensure a production-ready packaging, suited for the specific product and customer. With my colleagues we wanted to develop a package that combines form with function, not only producing a pleasing structural design, but a design with a protective function that gives the concept depth and builds a story.

We wanted to create a packaging design for champagne that incorporated the sophistication and luxury of drinking champagne. Since we wanted to highlight the laser technology in the packaging, we started out with a simple and square structural packaging design. The outer packaging was transformed into a beautiful scenery of champagne bubbles, as if the packaging itself was a glass of champagne, with small bubbles in the bottom and bigger and more frequent ones in the top. By doing so, the packaging itself spoke of the content only by the visual appearance of the structural design.

For the protective function we used biomimicry, i.e. borrowing a function from the animal kingdom. An interior was designed so that the bottle would be placed in mid-air, never in contact with the outer packaging's bottom or walls. The function is similar to the physiology of the woodpecker, from which the packaging has gotten its name; 'Pivert' is French for a bird within the family of woodpeckers. For the finish, the name was delicately cut-out on a sleeve with the brown side of the material, Stora Enso's CKB. To keep the branding from interfering with the bubbles, the sleeve was designed with an intact backside. This completed the luxurious feeling of layer-on-layer and simplicity that was key words in the making of Pivert Champagne.

The finished packaging was at last produced in the digital die cutter Highcon, using laser technology to get the final finish. I loved working with CKB, it is a great material with many fields of application. It gave the packaging the much needed strength capabilities to function as a luxurious champagne packaging and thanks to the two sides of different colour, it also gave the design the dynamic needed to make it work without adding any graphical print.'

Congratulations to Micaela once again!