For 15 years running, BillerudKorsnäs has arranged and hosted PIDA - Packaging Impact Design Award, a competition among design students in France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. For the first time in the history of the competition, an all-European winner has been selected. The Grand Finale was held at Luxe Pack Monaco, the world’s leading trade fair for luxury packaging, and the title went to “Bois Underwear” by Swedish students from design college Nackademin.
The students behind the winning design are Natasha Bosnjak, Alicia Lundgren and Christian Koch. Their design qualified for the Grand Finale by winning the Gold Award at the Swedish PIDA event. They suggested that packaging design in the future may very well be fun, playful and edgy. The winner is a retail pack for men’s underwear in the shape of a banana, which you peel to open.
“We are so happy about this prize,” says Alicia Lundgren. “It means everything. And it means a lot that we just followed our hearts, never held back, and disregarded the usual Scandinavian design conventions. We managed to make sustainability look fun, and we are very pleased with that.”
A glimpse of the future
For every year, the competition has a new theme. This year’s brief was "Bring the Future" and the students’ challenge was to develop a sustainable packaging concept for the year 2030. The jury looked at the innovativeness, sustainability, user-friendliness, concept and communication of the contesting design projects. Bois Underwear received high marks on all points, and its colourful appearance drew a lot of attention. In total, 36 design projects were nominated and four of them made it to the Grand Finale.
The Grand Finale winner was elected by a jury comprising a mix of industry professionals – designers, converters, brand owners and other specialists – all of whom have been on the jury at one of the previous PIDA-events this year.
“The brief presented to students at the PIDA 2019 was ambitious. Imagining the packaging of the future seems simple at first sight, but that is without counting the current trends that are the new technologies, the sustainable development and the aging of the population,” says Sophie Lindhe, Brand Project Coordinator, at BillerudKorsnäs.
Young talents become tomorrow’s packaging designers
The international competition PIDA is a BillerudKorsnäs initiative and is carried out in collaboration with leading universities and colleges in Sweden, the UK, France and Germany. Each year, about 200 design students participate.
“With PIDA we achieve several different purposes at the same time,” says Anders Gathu, Marketing Manager at BillerudKorsnäs. “We aim the spotlight on the importance of packaging for brands, consumer benefits and the environment. We want to shine light on the young talents who will become tomorrow’s packaging designers and bring them together with industry professionals. By offering a meeting place for ideas, innovation and inspiration, we help push industry development forward.”
Natasha Bosnjak, Alicia Lundgren and Christian Koch won the PIDA Grand Finale.
For more information about PIDA, please contact:
Sophie Lindhe, Brand Project Coordinator, BillerudKorsnäs
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
BillerudKorsnäs provides packaging materials and solutions that challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future. We are a world-leading provider of primary fibre based packaging materials and have customers in over 100 countries. The company has 8 production sites in Sweden, Finland and the UK and about 4300 employees in over 13 countries. BillerudKorsnäs has an annual turnover of about SEK 22 billion and is listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. www.billerudkorsnas.com