How do you market a product that is viewed as a commodity in most parts of the world? Taipei-based Green in Hand sought to elevate the perceived value of rice grown locally in Eastern Taiwan by presenting it in stylish, contemporary packaging. Touting its brand as a “life style proposal of exquisite agriculture,” Green in Hand packaged its organic rice in an earthy plain brown paper bag with a natural twisted twine handle and hand-drawn calligraphy label to create a simple and sustainable look.

Colorful gift packaging reinforced Green in Hand’s message that it “provides service for those who care about the relationship between human and land.” The floral design looks pretty enough to be a ladies’ handbag. The packaging program won both the Red Dot and Hong Kong Design Council awards.

When French skin care company, L’Occitane, came out with a new limited edition shea butter hand cream, it departed from its usual simple packaging design and chose a colorful traditional African textile pattern, called mudcloth, instead.

Aside from the fact that the design is eye-catching and that tribal prints are in fashion, mudcloth, also known as Bogolan, seemed like an unusual choice for a company associated with the fragrances of Provence.

On second thought, from a branding perspective, it made perfect sense. The African-themed packaging gave L’Occitane an opportunity to remind consumers of their products’ much celebrated key ingredient -– shea butter, the ivory-colored fat extracted from the nut of the West African shea tree and used in fine cosmetics, chocolate and medicines. L’Occitane’s limited edition hand cream set also comes in three exotic African scents: Desert Rose from Morocco; Hibiscus Flower from Egypt, and Cocoa Flower from the Ivory Coast. Plus, mudcloth is a quintessentially African technique of dying and printing cotton organically and naturally without any chemicals –- just dyes from bark and leaves, mud to oxidize colors, and water from the Niger. As a brand story, it holds together.

Alfaro is a tiny town in the renowned wine-producing La Rioja province in northern Spain. The region has been making wine since the days of the Phoenicians, with the earliest record of grape-growing dating to 873. This year to celebrate La Fiesta Barroca, Palacios Remondo created two commemorative wine collections that pay tribute to Alfaro, home to its winery. Palacios Remondo commissioned Estudio Dorian to design the packaging around a Baroque theme. The collection includes six labels for each wine, with the extravagantly Baroque ornamentation contained in the simple letterforms. The result is an understated elegance, clean and contemporary yet suggestive of a rich heritage.

JWT Brazil let the distinguishing flavors of Caipiroska, the Brazilian drink that is popular worldwide, lead it to the solution for the packaging of Smirnoff’s new beverage. It wrapped each bottle with the texture of the fruit flavor (lime, passion fruit and strawberry) inside and used a diagonal perforation to let customers peel away the outer “skin”. For a select mailing list, JWT even sent packaged Smirnoff Caipiroska sets in wooden produce crates.

The Smirnoff packaging is in the vanguard of integrating textures into print. Today more designers are utilizing the amazing capabilities of dimensional printing and Adobe software to create raster-textured images. No longer do viewers have to imagine the tactile quality of an object, they can actually feel it by running their fingers across a printed sheet. It’s not just movies that are embracing 3-D; the print medium is too.

How do you convince consumers that your tequila is authentically Mexican and not an Americanized version of what the South of the Border drink is all about? Skip the piñatas, the sombreros and all the hokey souvenir-type imagery for starters.

For the reintroduction of its product in the United States after an absence of several years, Espolon Tequila wrapped its brand in the rich traditions, history, festivities and artistic style of the Mexican culture. Spearheaded by Landor, the rebranding program was inspired by the engravings of renowned 19th century artist Jose Guadalupe Posada, whose skeleton people are best associated with the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations. Finely drawn illustrations by Steven Noble pay homage to Posada’s style and incorporate iconography reflecting the legends and lore of Mexico.

The release of Espolon Tequila in the U.S. coincided with the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain, and the images for the label as well as retail signage, advertising, point-of-purchase promotions, etc., celebrated “independencia.” The label images illustrate the fictitious journey of Guadalupe and Rosarita, with their inspirational companion Ramon the Rooster, the symbol of national pride, in their struggle for Mexican independence. The sophisticated design sidesteps superficial stereotypes and implies that like the imagery, the product represents the real Mexico.

Monika Ostaszewska was a student at the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw when she focused her graduation project on a packaging concept for a region in Poland known for the quality of its food products. Her idea was to create an umbrella brand called “Flavours of Podlaskie” for the region itself and sub-brands for each category of local food producers.

Because Podlaskie lies on the eastern border of Poland, it attracts a lot of foreign tourists who come to see the last European primeval forest and to sample Podlaskie’s famous specialities — “sękacz”, “pierogi” and cheese from Korycin. “Flavours of Podlaskie” packaging lets local producers benefit from the region’s reputation for quality, and also share the cost of a branding program that many may not be able to afford on their own.

Designed as a modular program, common elements that appear on all packages are the red “Flavours of Podlaskie” tag, double-warp woven images that reflect traditional Polish patterns, and border edges to frame the composition. Each package is white and one color. The color choice serves as a coding system that distinguishes different category of products.

As far as we know, the work is still just a concept, but it is beautifully designed and brilliantly conceived.

Aside from the fact that we find these shopping bags funny, they show the possibilities when designers literally think outside of the bag. When approaching an assignment, designers typically focus solely within the boundaries of the product itself, whether that is the edges of a page or the shape of a three-dimensional object. But sometimes the cleverest design answer presents itself in the way and in the environment in which the product will be used. What’s terrific about these shopping bag designs is that the user unwittingly is made part of the graphic solution. It takes the user’s participation to complete the visual pun.

Back in 2009, Frito-Lay did a good thing. It introduced the world’s first manufactured 100% biodegradable packaging for its healthy SunChips snack products. Made from plant-based materials, the SunChips bags are said to decompose completely in just 14 weeks, returning to Mother Nature all that it borrowed. Better yet, designers weren’t asked to make major sacrifices. SunChips packaging, undoubtedly printed using vegetable-based inks, could be as colorful and detailed in design as its less eco-friendly competitors.

Everyone should be happy, right? What’s not to like about a tasty whole grain snack that is good for the body and good for the earth. Well, for one, the noise pollution. The high decibel crinkling sound made by the environmentally friendly packaging every time the eater reached into the bag for another handful of chips was so loud that it made it hard to hear the TV and annoyed roommates who were trying to get some sleep. Frito-Lay tried to put a good face on it, admitting that yes, the bags were a little noisier, but not a big deal. The uproar on Facebook and YouTube, however, refused to quiet down. Consumers felt they shouldn’t have to put up with ear torture just to help the earth.

Last week, Frito-Lay finally caved in to the complainers by agreeing to pull the noisy biodegradable bags off grocery shelves for every flavor but the Original. It promised to continue to look for a quieter compostable solution. Until then, the world’s first biodegradable package has gone silent.

You’ve heard the barroom ditty “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer. Take one down and pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall”? Well, try this one: “33,000 beer crates forming a wall, 33,000 beer crates …”

Asked by their client, Atomium, to construct a temporary pavilion in Brussels to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal World Exhibition, SHSH, an architectural firm with offices in Brussels, London and Sendai, constructed a “package” exhibition space out of 33,000 recycled plastic beer crates.

“This project was an exercise in how a common item can transcend itself and become architecture, rather than mere object or even mere building,” explains SHSH (Shin Bogdan Hagiwara and Shizuka Hariu). “…we decided to use a material extracted from the daily life of an ordinary consumer. Hence, a plastic beer crate is used as a generic element – like bricks, but deployed beyond its individual characteristics. This allowed us to explore many common architectural features such as columns, arches, and domes…and form a huge and enigmatic interior environment.”

SHSH adds that the selection of empty beer crates, linked together like giant Lego blocks, “allowed us to reduce the time of assembly and disassembly, and to produce a series of spaces that far exceeds the mere accumulation of common elements in an architectural format.” The light filtering through the thousands of beer crates creates a reverent cathedral-like atmosphere that makes the space an art exhibit itself.

The must-do gift of the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival season, mooncakes have become more luxurious and lavish in their presentation than ever. In China, mooncake gifting is a multi-billion dollar industry. Opulently packaged mooncakes, typically sold in boxes of four, cost upwards of $45, with each cake elegantly displayed or nestled in its own container. As pricy as this is, Chinese social etiquette pretty much demands that everyone give these sweet delicacies to friends, family, co-workers, clients and sometimes even government officials during the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Moon Festival.

According to legend, the custom of mooncake giving dates back to the 14th century when Chinese rebel leaders used these treat-filled pastries to organize a massive insurrection against the Mongol invaders who oppressively ruled the country. Knowing that Mongols did not eat mooncake, the rebel leaders sought permission to distribute mooncakes to Chinese residents, arguing that it was their way of blessing the longevity of the Mongol Emperor. Unbeknownst to the Mongols, each mooncake contained a secret message that urged kill the Mongols on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the full moon would be at its brightest. As directed, the Chinese populace rose up as one and overthrew the Mongols, ushering in the Ming Dynasty. Thereafter, the Mid-Autumn Festival was celebrated with mooncakes.

Traditional mooncakes are dense round pastries, wrapped in a thin glazed crust and filled with lotus seed paste, lard and a whole salted duck egg yolk (symbolizing the full autumn moon). Like the Western tradition of giving fruitcake at Christmas, mooncakes are considered more an expression of friendship and respect than a food craving. But for most Chinese if you don’t give and receive mooncake, it wouldn’t feel like a Mid-Autumn celebration.

If anything mooncake-giving has become more popular than it was in the 14th century. Businesses and hotels have developed their own exclusive lines. Nouvelle cuisine chefs have introduced all kinds of new flavors including mixed nuts, ham, fruit, chocolate ganache, green tea, and champagne custard. Haagen-Daz has even created an ice cream-filled mooncake. Starbucks has also recognized the demand and come out with its own mooncake interpretation. Other traditionalists have incorporated really expensive ingredients like shark fin and bird’s nest.

The intricate molded pattern on the face of the mooncakes are often works of art in themselves. High-end products feature beautiful custom designs that are proprietary to the brand. Then there is the packaging for these presents, which, at times, is more befitting a $500 an ounce bottle of perfume, than pastry. In recent years, the Chinese government has become so concerned about overpackaging, it even mandated that the package couldn’t cost more than 25% of the product itself. Some manufacturers skirted this rule by categorizing its product as a “gift set” that happened to contain mooncakes.

With the Mid-Autumn Festival fast approaching, this year landing on September 22, mooncakes are selling like hotcakes, but there will always be some people who wait until the very last minute to complete their holiday shopping. For them, scalpers lie in wait, ready to sell them a few mooncakes at exorbitant prices from the back of their trucks.