We speak to Stefania Farina, new Pentawards Jury member for 2024 and lecturer at ELISAVA, to learn more about their Masters in Packaging Design as well as tips for students entering this year and common pitfalls to avoid.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and ELISAVA’s Masters in Packaging Design

ELISAVA is one of the leading design universities located in Barcelona, Spain. Our Masters in Packaging Design, boasting over 15 years of track record, offers an advanced training system that combines theoretical instruments with practical experience on real projects. This approach allows students to develop an interdisciplinary and integrated vision of packaging design. The various workshops, led by a team of professors with extensive and outstanding experience in the sector, provide the necessary tools to become successful designers specialized in conceiving packaging projects adapted to the needs of today’s products and with a clear vision of the future. Since the inception of the Master's programme, I have been involved in its activities. I lecture on Packaging History and oversee the archive of student works. While I do not directly tutor any practical workshops, I attend the final presentations and monitor the progress of different projects.

ELISAVA team and students at the 2023 Pentawards Gala Ceremony collecting the first ever Educator of the Year Special Award

We’re excited to have you as part of our Jury panel this year! As a lecturer in packaging design, what emerging trends do you see shaping the industry, and how might these influence what you're looking for in student entries?

I’d like to point out some conceptual matter that are important for the market nowadays that go beyond aesthetic ones, as I think that students’ projects have to be modern but looking forward tendencies and established trends:

- Multi-dimensional Design, the product and graphic design relating to the communication in traditional media as well as social networks >> storytelling

- Packaging Engineering versus traditional visual Design

- Sensitive and Interactive character (like touch, smell, acoustic or visual reaction)

- Inclusive design and gender less packaging

- Sustainable Design

- Online-trading

Each project need a special view but some of the things I value are: concern in the search for new solutions, courage to take risks, coherence between concept and form, precision in research/formalisation, but also a rigorous use of typography, an accurate art direction, good finishing and presentation, recovery of old techniques or iconography, as well as introduction of new materials or printing effects.

Could you share an example of a student project that particularly impressed you in the past, and what made it stand out?

There are so many projects that are really impressive, it is always difficult to choose one or two, actually every year selecting the project for different competitions it’s a very hard task. Anyway I would like to point out few of them for different reasons.

Bizarre, 2023 Pentawards Gold Award, Student Conceptual Work - Luxury goods

Accord by Bizzare for the careful art direction, the surrealistic inspiration and the accurate illustration that converts a cage into an object of desire from where we can let our sensuality escape.

PHB - ZERO WASTE PACKAGING, 2022 NXT-GEN Award

PHB for the use of a new material which allows to create a zero waste pack.

Buckhorn, 2023 Pentawards Gold Award, Student Conceptual Work - Luxury goods

Buckhorn for the attention to detail and typographic composition, as well as the use of special inks that allow the product to stand out in the place of consumption.

In your experience, what are some common pitfalls or mistakes that students tend to make in their packaging design works, and how can they avoid them?

First of all, I have to admit that many of the student’s results reach professional level or above. But I also observed two main mistakes. I noticed that students often get inspired only by existing packaging designs and trendy ones, which provokes repeating or belonging to tendencies, referring to structure or style. Also, many students value creativity, newness or originality over the aesthetical character of their designs.

I believe that those mistakes could be avoided by looking at tendencies in other design disciplines, historical packaging and design or any type of artistic expression. It is also useful to work with them and always be on the lookout for details, sharing and exposing their own design to others, insisting on the fact that design can be original, irreverent, it can challenge, but most of all it has to provoke desire.

What are your top 3 tips for students entering this year? 

1. Create packaging that has a strong concept behind it, as this gives you the best weapons to defend it.

2. Use typography as an ally, avoiding fashions to create timeless packaging. 

3. Focus on sustainable or easy recyclable materials and processing, and observe the newest efforts on sustainable materials and the commercial concepts at present, seeking an improvement on current market proposals.

Find out more about ELISAVA here , and enter this year's competition for a chance to be a Student winner!