Press Release
Tacto Inc. Receives the Silver A' Design Award for Aquetha Branding and Packaging in Packaging Design
The international grand jury of the 2023 - 2024 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Tacto Inc. for packaging design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 21, 2024 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Aquetha Branding and Packaging by Tacto Inc., designed for Tacto Inc, has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Packaging Design category. The award was conferred within the 2023 - 2024 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the Silver A' Design Award
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Aquetha Branding and Packaging
Aquetha is a packaging and branding design for aged Japanese sake. The bottle is hand-made by a glass artist and shaped by the force of gravity, which gives a natural roundness that suggests the passage of time. The rounded form also supports smooth aging after bottling. Transparent labels are produced with blank letterpress printing to reflect the clear character of ice-temperature aging. The simple outer box has a dent between the lid and the body to express the aging timeline. The design presents aged sake as an artwork rather than an ordinary product.
About Tacto Inc.
tacto was founded in 2020 with the vision to evolve digital design in Japan. tacto is a creative team that builds experience design from scratch, and a design consulting company that releases business from pre-established harmony to create a positive impact. tacto provides design consulting services centered on Story Design. The websites of fast-growing startups in Europe and the United States have an item called "OUR STORY," which not only serves as a guide to quality and functionality, but also attracts people in and of itself. The reason designs that don't communicate well or are difficult to use, is the lack of a story. Why do brands and services exist?
Award Record
With this recognition, Tacto Inc. is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Packaging Design Award
The A' Packaging Design Award is an international packaging competition that recognizes outstanding packaging designs by talented packaging designers worldwide. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to packaging designers, graphic designers, branding agencies and product manufacturers from all countries. Entries typically include bottles, boxes, cans, pouches, tubes and cartons. Awarded packaging designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/packaging
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission to advance society through good design by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, the upload of a work and the preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/158293
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/158293
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!158293
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/353058
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://aquetha.com/
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Aquetha Branding and Packaging
- Function
- Branding and Packaging
- Category
- Packaging Design
- Discipline
- Communication Design
- Industry
- Packaging & Retail, Branding & Advertising and Manufacturing
- Colors
- Light Gray, Gainsboro, Silver, Dark Olive Green and Dark Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Tacto Inc
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Tacto Inc.
- Country
- Japan
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2023 - 2024
- Design ID
- #158293
Credits
- Team
- Hayato Itakura, Takuro Nakajima, Kohei Futakuchi and Kazuya Sakamoto
- Image Credits
- Photographer: Masato Ishibashi Glass Artist: Yutaro Kijima
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Aged sake is a minor genre among Japanese sake, and the design team needed to re-propose it to the world in a way that is not bound by the traditional context of Japanese sake. Therefore, they created a design to position AQUETHA, which is characterized by ice-temperature aging, as the umbrella for the online gallery “Kitamura Sake Exhibition,'' which views aged sake as works of art, and as the first of the works that will be exhibited and sold there. Based on this concept, they planned and developed bottles that are hand-made by artists, and a website that functions as a gallery.
- Inspiration
- Design team faced business issue of what can they do to increase the value of aged sake, which is an idle asset in sake breweries across Japan. They found inspiration in paintings, which value of painting varies depending on popularity and the time. The solution was to open an online gallery as a curator to exhibit and sell aged sake, a treasure hidden throughout Japan.
- Challenge
- Since the Sake bottle is designed to be handcrafted one by one with glasswork craftsman, it was challenging to make them a perfect size and shape to keep the quality of sake among temperature and moisture. Design team and glass artist had tried so many different shape to test wether the bottle keeps the quality of sake in different atmosphere. They ended up using rounded bottle that helps smooth aging of sake after sake is bottled.
- Realization and Technology
- Bottles and packaging that do not compromise on every detail as a “artwork”. Design team commissioned glass artist Yutaro Kijima to create a bottle that is shaped by the force of gravity and has a natural roundness that gives a sense of the passage of time. Furthermore, in order to make the most of the clear impression that is a characteristic of ice-cold aging, they created transparent labels printed using blank letterpress printing. The outer box has a simple shape to make the flask-shaped bottle look more attractive.
- Operation and Interaction
- This tends to be SDGs project because lots of sake brewery have unsold sake that is asleep for a certain period of time (it is perfectly kept to be aged sake). The design team has branded them as Aged Sake to turn unsold sake into a value for brewery and customer, which ultimately prevented from lots of sake become a waste.
- Project Duration and Location
- 2months, Tokyo, Japan
- Specifications
- Bottle: width 110mm × depths110mm × height150mm Package: width135mm × depth135mm × height 165mm
- Keywords
- Packaging, Product Design, Website
