Iron Packaging Design · 2024
Doritos Solid Black 2023 Food Packaging
by PepsiCo Design and Innovation
- A' Design Award 2024 Iron Winner in Packaging Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- CLIENT: PepsiCo
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 22,320
- Verification code 3F9F7EDC1F · Verify this award
About Doritos Solid Black 2023 Food Packaging
Doritos Solid Black 2023 is a limited edition food packaging design created for a snack brand initiative that supports Black innovators and changemakers. The annual series was expanded into a collaboration platform that highlights Black artists. The artwork was made by Mz. Icar, an anonymous interdisciplinary arts collective composed mainly of Black women. The artwork was then extended into a complete visual identity system, applying its palette and graphics to the packaging, an influencer kit and merchandise. The kit takes a pyramid shape inspired by the brand triangle.
PepsiCo Design and Innovation's Food Packaging represents a compelling achievement in contemporary commercial package design, demonstrating sophisticated understanding of shelf presence dynamics, demographic communication, and chromatic psychology within highly competitive retail environments where visual distinctiveness constitutes primary differentiation strategy and consumer attention spans compress to millisecond assessments of brand relevance and product appeal. The compositional strategy deploys extreme tonal contrast as foundational organizing principle, positioning electric chartreuse and neon lime greens against profound black ground to create maximum chromatic separation and immediate visual arrest, a calculated deployment of complementary temperature relationships and value polarity that ensures the package commands attention across crowded retail contexts where hundreds of competing products vie simultaneously for consumer recognition and consideration. Technical execution demonstrates accomplished gradient control across the flexible substrate surface, where smooth tonal transitions from saturated emerald through brilliant yellow to obsidian black model three-dimensional form through chromatic rather than purely tonal means, suggesting digital rendering sophistication and careful attention to how light behavior communicates material presence and volumetric reality within two-dimensional photographic representation optimized for both print reproduction and screen-based digital distribution across social media platforms and e-commerce environments. The supporting geometric elements, angular triangular forms suggesting energy vectors or crystalline structures, establish dynamic visual rhythm and contemporary aesthetic affiliation, these abstract compositional devices functioning simultaneously as framing mechanism that directs attention toward central package and as cultural signifier connecting the design to broader visual vocabularies of gaming interfaces, electronic music culture, and digital native aesthetics that resonate with target demographic sensibilities and lifestyle aspirations. Typography and illustrative content employ bold sans-serif letterforms and stylized figurative portraiture rendered in saturated color fields, these graphic elements communicating brand identity while suggesting thematic territories of music, urban culture, and youthful energy through symbolic visual shorthand that operates across cultural boundaries and linguistic differences, demonstrating package design's unique capacity to function as immediate nonverbal communication synthesizing product information, brand personality, and emotional appeal within unified visual statement. The work participates within rich tradition of commercial package design while simultaneously engaging contemporary design discourse around maximalist aesthetics, technological color palettes, and digital-first visual communication that acknowledges how products increasingly exist as much within screen-based environments and social media feeds as upon physical retail shelves, this dual existence demanding design solutions that reproduce effectively across both material and digital contexts while maintaining consistent brand impact and visual coherence. The dramatic lighting paradigm, characterized by theatrical spotlight effects and carefully controlled shadow behavior, elevates mundane snack packaging toward aspirational product photography conventions more typically associated with luxury goods or premium consumer products, this upward categorical positioning through sophisticated visual presentation suggesting design's capacity to add perceived value and emotional resonance beyond purely functional container requirements. One might observe how this package design invites consideration of contemporary commercial design's increasing sophistication, wherein even everyday consumable products receive aesthetic attention and design investment that acknowledges consumer desire for beauty, excitement, and visual pleasure within ordinary purchasing decisions, suggesting evolved understanding that product packaging functions as miniature billboard, cultural artifact, and aesthetic object simultaneously worthy of appreciative attention beyond its utilitarian purposes.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- As part of SOLID BLACK®, our ongoing DORITOS® initiative that supports Black innovators and changemakers, we’ve scaled our annual limited edition series into a collaboration-driven platform that amplifies Black artists. For the third DORITOS® SOLID BLACK® series, we commissioned Mz. Icar, an anonymous interdisciplinary arts collective composed primarily of Black women, to create the artwork for our limited-edition packaging.
- Inspiration
- We then extended the artwork by Mz. Icar to a complete visual identity system that brought the piece’s palette and graphics to packaging design, an influencer kit, and merchandise. The iconic DORITOS® triangle inspired the kit’s pyramid shape and its luxe stationery that highlights how each of our 2023 Changemakers is igniting positive change and making a bold social impact.
Colors of Doritos Solid Black 2023 Food Packaging
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Award-Winning Snack and Beverage Innovation
We create iconic products that celebrate culture and drive positive change. Our portfolio of beloved brands combines bold flavors with purposeful design, bringing joy to billions of consumers worldwide while supporting diverse communities and innovators.
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