Following their 2025 Home, Leisure & Other Markets Platinum win, we speak to the team at Zenpack about the vision, craft and strategy behind their success

Tell us a bit about Zenpack

Paul Des Marais, Creative Strategist : We’re a full-service packaging design agency and packaging manufacturer based in the United States and Southeast Asia. Our primary U.S. office is located in San Jose, California with satellite locations in New York City and Austin, Texas. In Asia, we have offices in Taipei, Taiwan and two offices in mainland China, one in Dongguan and the other in Xiamen. Our manufacturing facilities span Southern China, specializing in all types of packaging and materials.

The Zenpack design team is comprised of industrial engineers, graphic designers, and brand strategists. We’re essentially a creative agency with unique capabilities like structural design and production.

How would you describe your core area of expertise, and how has it evolved over time?

Paul Des Marais, Creative Strategist: We specialize in building comprehensive packaging design strategies with a focus on the unboxing experience. Our founders started in packaging design, and the team shares backgrounds in industrial design, experiential design, architecture, and branding. These diverse skillsets have allowed us to evolve into a full-service creative agency. Due to our ability to communicate directly with our co-workers at our factories in China, we can explore unusual materials, produce high-quality samples, and provide our clients with a deeper understanding of the design process.

Dwell Dripper for Verve Coffee Roasters, 2025 Home, Leisure & Other Markets Platinum Award

You have won the 2025 Pentawards Home, Leisure & Other Markets Platinum Award. How does it feel to receive such recognition?

Andy Cho, Industrial Designer: It feels surreal, and I am incredibly grateful. I never thought that what started as a fun little spark of imagination would turn into one of the top honors in the industry.

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: It’s a real honor to have the work recognized by professional peers, and we’re grateful that Verve’s team gave us the trust to bring this rather unusual design to life.

Tell us about your Platinum winning project “Dwell Dripper for Verve Coffee Roasters”, the story behind it, inspiration, challenges,…

Andy Cho, Industrial Designer: As a lifelong coffee enthusiast and daily morning drinker, this project was a labor of love. The inspiration for the Dwell Dripper was deeply personal, rooted in a memory from when I first moved to the United States at age 13. I remember being fascinated by the iconic brown paper lunch bag—an object that didn’t exist in my home country, South Korea.

While exploring concepts, I visualized that bag sitting behind the dripper cup. I realized the tapering triangle of the folded bag could function as a sturdy, structural truss. That 'aha' moment went straight into my sketches and eventually became the foundation for the final design. It was a 17-month journey to balance that nostalgic aesthetic with a functional, eco-friendly structure that showcased the silicone dripper's unique form while including dedicated space for its custom scoop.

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: Andy brought the concept to the review, and we immediately agreed there was an inherent pleasantness in the form that invites people to pick it up. The challenge was finding the right folds to create enough structure while keeping the product exposed as much as possible, all while maintaining a single-piece dieline to ensure ease of assembly and kitting. There were many rounds of refinements, for sure.

What part of the project did you enjoy the most?

I truly enjoyed the journey of transforming a mental spark into a visible sketch, and eventually into a tangible prototype. There is a specific kind of magic in the 'zero to one' process—taking an abstract inspiration, like the memory of a lunch bag, and refining it until it becomes a physical object someone can hold. Seeing the structural truss concept move from my sketchbook into a realworld product was easily the most rewarding part of this experience.

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: This was one of Andy’s first few projects. I had a lot of fun working with him and helping him navigate the structural design process. It’s incredibly rewarding to see a great concept developed while preserving its original intent.

You also won five additional awards in the 2025 competition. Was there one project that stood out as particularly rewarding to work on?

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: PulpFixin definitely stood out as a memorable project. We developed an entire line of medical lab tube trays using only paper-based materials, replacing a significant amount of plastic. The project took us two years to complete, and we continue to expand the system to accommodate more types of testing tubes. The potential to replace tons of single-use plastic is extremely rewarding.

PulpFixin Paper-Based Labware - 2025 Silver SUSTAINABLE DESIGN (Body, health and beauty)

Can you tell us what you are currently working on? Anything exciting that you can share with us?

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: Unfortunately, we can’t disclose any current projects. However, last year we had the opportunity to redesign the entire packaging systems for several brands. These projects are challenging but also extremely rewarding. They require a different process because the considerations go beyond a single product. They involve brand alignment, scalability, material consolidation, future growth, and adaptability.

Boomii Balm Case Refill System - 2025 Bronze BODY, HEALTH & BEAUTY (Beauty)

How do you manage to stay creative and find inspiration?

I believe true creativity is a byproduct of lived experience. When I first moved to the U.S., I forced myself to try things that were completely foreign to me, like PB&J sandwiches and chocolate milk carried in those brown lunch bags. If I hadn't pushed myself to participate in that new culture, I never would have noticed the beauty or the structure of the bag that eventually inspired an award-winning design.

My inspiration comes from being an active participant in the world—whether that’s through listening, seeing, or doing. My life goal is to try as many things as possible because the more experiences I have, the more sources I have to draw from in my design work.

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: My single biggest inspiration is our clients and their business challenges. The difficult problems are what excite us the most now.

Holiday Wine Packaging - 2025 Silver BRAND IDENTITY & CONNECTED PACKAGING (Self promotion)

To you, what is the power of design?

Paul Des Marais, Creative Strategist : Design gives us the power to change perspectives and create joyful experiences. Some of my favorite moments happen when I unexpectedly encounter an unusual design element such as a hand-painted logo or a clever urban design: Someone went through a complex series of decisions to result in this thing that so many people experience.

Leo Chao, Co-founder & Creative Director: I think the power of design is that it gives us the relentless hope that we can always make things better.

Find out more about Zenpack here .

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