This month many Londoners have been lucky enough to bear witness to British artist Lucy Sparrow taking an everyday cornershop and catapulting it into the art world with her felt FMCG creations. You can read all about it here.
Clearly Lucy's skill and creativity is extraordinary but it does reflect the important role that packaging plays in the retail experience - taking something ordinary and making it appealing. Many brands accomplish this but only a select few push the boundaries.
Here's how boring objects like shoelaces, hair pins, and even socks are being combined with 2D and 3D design elements to create innovative shelf stand-out solutions.
Cartoon characters
Brightly coloured, stylised characters are always bound to catch our eye and capture our imagination. They bring us back to our childhood and put a fun twist on usually boring everyday products.
These, believe it or not, are shoelaces.
Bready or not, here we come.
Fresh breath, fresher pack design.
Hair pin heaven.
Art materials
These packaging designs unleash our inner creativity. We think the parmesan pencil and sharpener are particularly clever.
Sketch yourself dry.
This is sharp.
Socks made to look like paint brushes. There's no link between the two but it's interesting nonetheless.
Recognisable objects
By embodying a range of familiar everyday items, these products shake up the packaging status quo. A pizza box that opens like a Babybel? Why not?
Light up your thirst.
The opening is more fun than the eating sometimes.
Waxing lyrcial.
Fruit juice has never been more real.
Different for different's sake
This rice packaging defies all convention. Definitely one for the creative chef, there's no doubt that this futuristic design would stand out on shelf against the transparent bags and pouches we normally get our rice from.