In honour of World Bee Day, we collected some of our favourite honey brand and packaging designs that are worth buzzing about.

With honey one of the most popular food products for the health conscious and sweet lovers alike, packaging and branding within the category boasts a broad variety. Here we look at some of these variations and the inspiration behind the designs.

Supha Bee Farm Honey by Prompt Design

With the honey product market a particularly competitive one, Prompt Design set out to deliver a brand identity that stands out as well as communicating the products specific advantages and benefits.

Supha Bee Farm is one of the two main honey producers in Thailand which has its own bee farms with rearing and breeding facilities producing 100% real pure honey.

To reflect the freshness of the honey arriving straight from the hive, Prompt Design took direct inspiration from the beehive structure, creating a paper honeycomb inner packaging to secure the bottle which is then framed by the outer wooden box, just as you would find from the real thing.

The ‘S’ and ‘B’ from Sulpha Bee Farm is inventively transformed into wings and an abdomen of a bee that sits withing a hexagon outline to form the logo.

This particular design won Gold in the Food category for our 2020 Pentawards competition.

Find out more on Prompt Design here .

Little Bee

Little Bee is pure and organic honey from Kashmir sold all around the world as India's premium honey.

Atharva Shelke’s main objective was to create packaging that was unique in the market, globally appealing and could easily be used on the go in smaller portions.

Taking inspiration from the shape of the bee’s sac in which it stores nectar, Shelke developed a pouch that could contain a smaller amount of the honey. The opening of the pouch is designed in such a way that you just have to pull the tip backwards, ensuring that no small fragments of the packaging is detached, and the shape makes it easily pourable without causing spillages. The transparent sac allows the natural gold colour of the honey to shine through with minimal type. The material is made from biodegradable PLA (Polylactic Acid) and is completely environmentally friendly and will degrade within a year.

For the main jar and squeeze bottle the core focus was to make the packaging as interactive for the consumer as possible. As the honey is consumed a hidden message becomes visible, surprising the consumer and encouraging quick consumption to read it in full. There are different types of messages on each of the bottles. Furthermore, a QR code appears on the lid which, when scanned, takes the user to the website with useful information about the Kashmir honey and various recipes to try at home.

Find out more on Atharva Shelke here .

Manuka Honey 1700 + from The True Honey Co.

New Zealand based The True Honey Co. are a dedicated to finding the purest Mānuka tree forests in the country and have harvested the highest ever Mānuka honey to ever be recorded, certified at an unprecedented 1,700+ MGO (31+UMF).

Through collaboration with Think Packaging, Marx Design provided this single source, limited edition honey is with a bespoke clean white box, designed by taking inspiration from the unique and particular process that delivers this rare batch of honey.

Hand crafted by master book binders, each ‘petal’ magnetically locks together to offer an extraordinary unboxing experience, as well as serving as a display unit for the precious honey jar and accompanying bespoke honey drizzler. The box is closed tightly with a highly finished, textured paper wrap displaying the distinct harvest process retold by Kate Philips at Citizen, and sealed with a hand signed tamper proof sticker. The packaging boasts a luxury aesthetic to reflect the true rarity of this product.

The honey sits within a glass jar, completed with a hand-turned lid made from sustainably sourced heart rimu.

Find out more on Marx Design here .

Honeyz

José Augusto Hykavy’s premium packaging for high-quality honey produced in New Zealand that boasts a minimal yet bold design.

Following a clean and structured design system, José Augusto Hykavy employs a minimalist colour palette utilizing the natural gold and yellow hues of the honey which is then offset against a matte black to make it stand out.

The logo also embodies this minimalist aesthetic featuring a stylised illustration made up of simple lines and curves to create the form of the bee.

The modest visuals and select colour scheme ensure that nothing distracts from the product’s single ingredient, making the honey itself the central focus.

Find out more on José Augusto Hykavy here .

The Producer

The Brandhouse were tasked with creating a complete branding and packaging sweet for an independent Greek Honey producer who insists on maintaining and ensuring purity and naturalness through a traditional hand-made production process at low volumes.

With his staunch philosophy as the driving force for the quality and result of the product, Brandhouse positions the producer as the protagonist of the brand storytelling, with his profession giving the brand its name.

Characterful Illustrations of the producer adorn the jars, accompanied by a corresponding hand-written like font. The same simplicity applies to the drawing of the natural ingredients that give the honey its different colours and aromas resulting in six variations.

The Brandhouse’s handcrafted minimal design reflects the brand’s ethos of less is more – Using a meticulous production process to generate smaller quantities at a higher concentrate to deliver authentic, high value Greek Honey.

Find out more on The Brandhouse here .

BeeNZ

BeeNZ is a family-run sustainable Bee farm in the remote forests and hills of New Zealand. Having produced a barrel of their highest ever UMF rating Manuka Honey they turned to creative studio Society to produce a specialised packaging solution that would present the product as a luxury item and works well as a gift for local and international consumers.

Bringing to focus the rarity of this particular Manuka honey, Society builds a narrative that highlights the naturally precise and unique process, centring the four main ingredients; Time, place, climate and the honey bee. The narrative unfolds through the unpackaging experience and builds a sense of scarcity.

A deep rich green is used for the outer box to reflect the remote bush where the Manuka is sourced as well as being a widely appealing colour and building a luxury quality. Both gold foil embossing and blind debossing accentuates this luxury feel giving the box a hint of tactility. Once opened the inner gold laminate is revealed, reflecting light to create a golden glow and spotlighting the jar within. To emphasise the narrative and positioning all materials are methodically selected to create a feeling of climate, atmosphere and movement.

Find out more on Society studio here .

BEE-FEE

BEE-FEE is a conscientious honey brand giving back to the bees. With bees facing constant air pollution and chemical contamination from insecticides on flowers their population if facing a dramatic decline. BEE-FEE collaborated with Opus B Brand Design to develop a packaging that enables the consumer to enjoy their 100% organic honey and help the bees themselves.

The packaging consists of two elements: a glass jar which can be recycled once finished and a slim concrete base that can be transformed into a flowerpot. This element encourages the consumer to plant flowers to be left on balconies or gardens, thus expanding the bee’s ecosystem. The slim, hexagonal shape of the flowerpot is ingeniously engineered not only to reflect the shape of a hive but also for space-saving purposes.

By expanding their eco-system in cities BEE-FEE are aiming to help the bees from within the industry that directly benefits from them. One jar at a time.

BEE FEE design won Silver in the Food category for our 2019 Pentawards competition

Find out more on Opus B Brand Design here .

Marsam Honey

Marsam is a fledgling brand that started its activity selling online. Taha Fakouri’s task was to design a packaging that would stand out in the market but also appeal to consumers at first sight.

Fakouri set out to create a visual identity that would appeal to a wide, global audience by using minimal design and a simple colour palette. Staying true to this minimalist aesthetic, Fakouri developed a special typography that would act as the champion for the design.

The wavy and intertwined edges of the typography are arranged together in such a way to imitate how a drop of honey would run down the edge of the jar. It’s stretched out positioning and varying shapes and dimensions catches the eye without the use of images or illustrations.

Find out more on Taha Fakouri here .

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