We speak to Guozhi Fu, CEO of 2022 Diamond Winner Urban Forest, to learn more about their award-winning work.

Tell us a bit about Urban Forest

URBAN FOREST has been focusing on outdoor and travel products since its establishment. Comfort is always our No.1 concern when we are designing. Infused with up-to-date colours and trendy shapes, our products bring fashion and style to daily routines and outdoor adventures.

How did you feel about being crowned the 2022 Diamond – Best of Show award?

The Diamond Prize is a great honour for us. We cannot tell you how excited we are, to simply stand at the ceremony podium among the design idols we look up to. It is a dream come true. We're not only here to gain honor, but also to learn. During the festival, we were truly inspired by the world-class speakers on design.

Tell us more about the idea behind your winning work Pocket Neck Pillow

The tree-shaped shell is the packaging for a travel neck pillow. It is small and portable, and it also has a lovely shape. Using the elastic property of silicone material, this packaging is used as both a storage bag and an air pump for the neck pillow. It is a sustainable and environmentally-friendly design because the packaging is functional and reusable.

Consumers will use the packaging all the time rather than throw it away after buying the product. The air pump function changes how to use an inflatable neck pillow. Just simply use the packaging to blow the pillow rather than using one's mouth making it more hygienic, especially when traveling during the Covid-19 period. This packaging design makes the travel pillow unique and quite attractive.

Pocket Neck Pillow, 2022 Pentawards Diamond Winner, Body, Health & Beauty

What would you say is your area of expertise?

We design and produce products for travel. To achieve convenient use and practical function, we developed our special material, SkinTouch™, a light but strong polyester fabric with a matte surface and excellent waterproof ability. It feels smooth, like skin, and is very easy to clean. With SkinTouch™, we can do more to help people in busy cities wear better, travel better, and live better.

Our main target market right now is China, including both online and offline businesses. Also, we have many co-branding clients, and we do interesting cross-over products with them. After winning the Pentawards Diamond Award we are considering pushing this product to the global market. We are planning to attend some important international trade fairs in the following year. We hope this product could be a great gift for travelers worldwide.

Do you have any exciting projects that you can share with us?

The most exciting project is definitely the Diamond winner: The Pocket Pillow.

Pocket Neck Pillow, 2022 Pentawards Diamond Winner, Body, Health & Beauty

Inspired by nature, URBAN FOREST aspires to connect urban life and outdoor travel. With the idea of "live with sense and travel with style", URBAN FOREST is engaging to make every single trip a unique journey. No boundaries, a variety of styles, and chosen for everyday mixing and matching. Urban Forest makes city dwellers feel as if they are in nature.

We believe that everyone should think independently and develop his or her own style. We don’t easily jump into flash fashion trends. Personality, fun, quality, function, and good looks, are the spirits rooted in our design. We also believe that being stylish doesn’t mean going against environmental concerns and social responsibility. Sustainable development has been and will be our top priority.

Inspiration from nature can be easily found in URBAN FOREST’s designs: a blossom of delicacy, a cactus in the desert, a tree with vitality, and light going through the tree crown. Precise cuts and advanced technology transform nature’s creatures into stylish works of art with functionality.

Pocket Neck Pillow, 2022 Pentawards Diamond Winner, Body, Health & Beauty

What do you think is the biggest challenge for packaging in 2023?

The biggest challenge is that our competitors are large enterprises with strong design teams or professional design agencies specialising in packaging design services. They have been immersed in the field of packaging design for many years. They have very rich design experience, and they also have very rich experience in the direction of competition rules compared to us, who participated in the competition for the first time.

However, we are a lifestyle brand making everyday products. We designed the packaging while we were designing the product. Our viewpoint is primarily from the standpoint of product design and usage. We concentrate more on how people use this product. And maybe that is what makes us so different from all the competitors and why we won the unexpected highest honor.

Pocket Neck Pillow, 2022 Pentawards Diamond Winner, Body, Health & Beauty

Find out more about Urban Forest here.