For our latest casual community event of the year, we headed to Everyman Broadgate with a room full of brilliant and inspiring creatives to talk trends in the packaging design industry.

Despite that fact that everyone seemed to have their Christmas party, we had a brilliant turnout for our December Meets. Designed to be more relaxed the Meets are all about catching up with creatives in the design space and hearing some interesting keynotes from key industry voices. This edition was supported partners by Winter & Co , Tapi and Creative Crowd , Winter & Co joined us in the reception to put their exceptional sustainable coverings & projects on display. Alongside Tapi   with their innovative caps and closures including some ultra-premium marble caps and even one made with oyster shells.

First up for the evening was Chloe Scanlan, Marketing Manager at Pentawards with an exclusive sneak peek at the 2024/25 Pentawards trend report. Crafted to give inspiration for the community, to provide a timeline of packaging design trends develop across the years and an insight into what’s next for these trends.

As a sneak peek, Chloe highlighted 4 key trends on the evening; Designing with Purpose, Solo Symbolics, Back to the Archives and Leave No Trace. Interested to hear more? The 2024/25 Trend Report is now available to download here.

Following on from the ‘Leave No Trace’ Trend, Pentawards 2024 Diamond winner, This Way Up collaborated with their client One Good Thing to discuss the winning project. Dan Monteith, Strategy Director at This Way Up and Dan Bedford, CEO at OGT, took to the stage (floor!) with their talk ‘WHY CAN’T M.A.M.I.L.s just eat bananas’. A funny, interesting and eye-opening chat, they focusing on the innovative and sustainable oat and protein bar -  OGT, that does indeed, leave no trace, and dived into the storytelling and branding behind it, by This Way Up.

Before the break, we then heard from Jeremy Lindley, Global Design Director at Diageo on a project close to his heart - Johnnie Walker: The world's lightest whisky glass bottle. Discussing reducing their carbon footprint, pushing design boundaries, and leading and sharing this breakthrough in the industry.

Lauren Hylton-Davies, Marketing Manager at Tapi was up next discussing Packaging and Closures Trends, talking us through examples and key trends in the world of bottle closures, and values of Tapi and their partners. Lauren took us through how they convey authenticity, express sustainability, embrace single materials and premiumisation.

Last but by no-means least, Co-Founder of Creative Crowd, Dan Levey hosted a panel with Jon Gibbs Managing Director at Derek&Eric and Claire Robertshaw Executive Creative Director at Design Bridge & Partners . Their theme was designing for tomorrow, touching on the importance of embracing AI, talent and building responsibly – a really interesting discussion where we were able to get views on both big and small agency life, what they are looking with talent, what they stand for and how they are embracing and adapting to industry changes. It left us wanting to know more.

A brilliant night all round, with a big thank you to the amazing speakers, our partners and everyone who supported and attended. Here’s to celebrating the creativity and passion that drive the world of packaging design. Until next time!

Interested in the packaging design community and content? Our Festival will be back 28-29th January 2025 at Paris Packaging Week, register for free here to attend!