Jamie Bates, a senior designer at London-based Landor Associates, has won the UK leg of The Luxe Pack Design Awards 2004 and will compete in the international finals during the luxury packaging show in Monaco in October.
The Awards, open to professional designers with 1-5 years’ working experience, were introduced for the first time last year, with England, Spain and Japan joining the five inaugural participating nations – Germany, Brazil, Italy, France and the US – for the 2004 competition.
In Monaco the eight national winners will battle for the grand €10,000 prize and trophy. This year’s brief required participants to design a powder compact with mirror and applicator, together with the outer retail packaging, and, optionally, a matching lipstick.
UK competition organiser WDG Azure received 67 entries, with the judging panel narrowing these down to just 7 finalists. Their concepts were presented during a gala evening at London’s Design Council on July 8 at which the winner was announced.
Jamie Bates’ winning “Metro-sexual” compact for “modern men” has a two-part construction, with a highly polished mirrored steel shell encompassed within a scratch-resistant clear resin case featuring a low wattage LED bulb for low light use.
The mirror-fronted surface can be used when the piece is closed, or the compact will slide open to reveal a magnetic cartridge holding pressed powder in the front an a recess on the back holding the brush. The brush head retracts fully into the applicator for storage.
The packaging is an unbleached board carton with embossed image or logo, whose simplicity Bates says “complements and enhances the beauty of the object contained within”.