Silver Packaging Design · 2024
Challenger Alcoholic Beverage Packaging
by Yao Wu
- A' Design Award 2024 Silver Winner in Packaging Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- CLIENT: Beijing Wuyao Cultural and Creative Co. Ltd.
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 42,665
- Verification code EAB16A365F · Verify this award
About Challenger Alcoholic Beverage Packaging
Challenger is a packaging design for a pair of spirits bottles. The design draws on two classic Chinese mythological stories, Nezha in the Dragon Palace and Wukong in the Heavenly Palace, and conveys a spirit of daring to challenge. The bottles are orange and blue and carry themed illustrations. The box is dark blue with gold rims, and elements representing Wukong and Nezha are printed on the front with embossing and gold stamping. The box opens as a double door at an oblique angle of 60 degrees and then stands upright on a flat surface.
Wu yao's Challenger Alcoholic Beverage Packaging represents a distinguished achievement in contemporary packaging design that successfully bridges millennia of artistic heritage with modern luxury market expectations. This remarkable ensemble demonstrates how traditional visual vocabularies, including mythological creature imagery, classical geometric patterns, and time-honored color symbolism, may be reinterpreted through contemporary design sensibilities to create packaging that functions simultaneously as product container, brand ambassador, and collectible object. The designer appears to have drawn upon deep wells of cultural iconography, deploying the dragon as a symbol of power, wisdom, and auspicious fortune on one vessel while reserving the phoenix, traditional emblem of renewal, beauty, and celestial grace, for the presentation case. The technical execution reveals sophisticated understanding of production processes, from the apparent ceramic glazing techniques that allow complex illustrative detail to wrap seamlessly around cylindrical forms to the precise registration of metallic printing on the outer packaging. The chromatic strategy employs bold complementary opposition, the warm amber-orange vessel and cool sapphire-blue vessel creating maximum visual impact while the shared golden accents and stylistically unified illustrative approach maintain coherent brand identity across variant colorways. The composition of mythological scenes demonstrates narrative sophistication, with dynamic figural arrangements and atmospheric perspective suggesting depth and movement within the constraints of curved surfaces. One might observe how the square seal-like cartouches anchor each vessel's design, providing stable focal points amid swirling decorative energy while reinforcing cultural authenticity. The viewer is invited to consider how such packaging transforms the act of giving and receiving into ritual celebration, elevating everyday commerce into cultural ceremony through the mediation of thoughtful design.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- This is a spirits packaging design which uses two classic mythological stories Wukong and Nezha. The color of the illustrated bottle on the bottle orange and blue and the packaging box is dark blue with gold rims The front of the packaging box is printed with elements representing Wukong and Nezha and the craftsmanship is embossed with gold stamping.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Packaging box 30cm*12cm*22cm.
- Tags
- Challenger, Package design, Chinese Mythology, Chinese spirits
- Production Technology
- The main color of the bottle is orange and blue, and the bottle has themed illustrations printed on it. The theme color of the packaging box is dark blue, with embossed hot stamping technology on the edges, elemental symbols representing Wukong and Nezha printed on the front, and embossing technology to show gold and red decorative patterns. The packaging box adopts a double-door box opening method. The inside of the packaging box is printed with dark blue dark patterns corresponding to the theme, and Chinese poems are printed in hot stamping.
- Design Challenge
- The main challenge of this design is how to present these two classic mythological stories in a unique form on the bottle body and how to choose the material and craftsmanship of the external packaging box The painting form should fit the product and the craftsmanship selection should not be too complex but also reflect delicacy
- Project Duration
- The project began in May 2022 in Beijing and was completed in July 2022.
- Operation Flow
- The packaging box adopts a double-door opening method. Different from the traditional forward opening angle, it adopts an oblique 60-degree opening method. After the packaging box is opened, it can stand upright on a flat surface.
- Research
- This is a double bottle spirits packaging design based on the Chinese mythological stories. The protagonists of the two stories have a spirit of courage to challenge and this spirit coincides with Shede spirits industry myth series . The bottle color of this design is orange and blue and the process adopts the way of gold stamping . This packaging box is opened in a different way . Packaging box is also made of dark blue with gold trim and the gilded Shed logo is printed on elements with two classic mythological stories making the design more integrated while reflecting the quality of Shede spirits industry over the years
- Inspiration
- The inspiration comes from the classic Chinese mythological stories of Nezha causing havoc in the Dragon Palace and Wukong causing havoc in the Heavenly Palace . The spirit of daring to challenge conveyed by it coincides with the concept of Shede brand this time. Drawing two stories into illustrations and printing them on the bottle not only looks beautiful but also gives deeper meaning to the bottle, and better reflects the charm of mythological stories.