Gold Packaging Design · 2025
Guijiu 20 Baijiu Packaging
by Liandong Zhang and Xueqian Zhang
- A' Design Award 2025 Gold Winner in Packaging Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Guizhou Guijiu Group Co., Ltd
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 134,506
- Verification code 52822D8621 · Verify this award
About Guijiu 20 Baijiu Packaging
Guijiu 20 is packaging for a Chinese baijiu spirit. The bottle joins a round top with a square body, a form linked to traditional ideas of harmony. Relief patterns of butterflies, phoenixes, birds and fish are drawn from the traditional motifs of ethnic groups in Guizhou, China. Annual ring lines and terrace lines refer to ageing and to the local landscape. The bottle is made of high-transparency glass with a metallic cap, and a surface treatment gives the glass a ceramic-like texture at a lower cost. The square body also improves grip.
Heijie He's Guijiu 20 Baijiu Packaging emerges from a rich tradition of East Asian material culture where the presentation vessel carries meaning equal to its precious contents, embodying principles of craftsmanship and aesthetic refinement that have guided ceremonial object-making across millennia. The design demonstrates remarkable sensitivity to the interplay between surface pattern and three-dimensional form, deploying topographical line motifs that may reference the mountainous landscapes traditionally associated with premium spirit production, where altitude, water purity, and terroir converge to create distinctive flavor profiles. The golden plaques, with their meditative concentric rings, suggest both the patient passage of time essential to aged spirits and the philosophical concept of emanating energy from a central source, creating visual metaphors for the distillation and maturation processes. Technical accomplishment manifests in the seamless integration of multiple decorative systems, the flowing contour lines, the geometric precision of the metallic elements, the dimensional relief of the phoenix imagery, all unified through the commanding ultramarine palette that speaks to depth, wisdom, and precious rarity. The phoenix motif carries profound significance within East Asian symbolic vocabularies, representing renewal, excellence, and auspicious blessing, its placement on the bottle suggesting that the contained spirit offers transformative qualities to those who partake. This packaging transcends mere commercial function to propose itself as a cultural artifact worthy of display and preservation, inviting viewers to consider how contemporary design might honor heritage traditions while achieving fresh visual expression.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Adopting the bottle shape of heaven round and earth square, it creates a unique visual identity. The combination of the annual rings and the lines of local terraces to express the concept of vintage and regional cultural characteristics, and highlights the brand's quality connotation of nobility, scarcity and excellence. The bottle pattern adopts the traditional patterns of local ethnic minorities, which not only shows the modern design aesthetics, but also conveys the deep humanistic emotions.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- box：140*110*275mm
bottle：115*62*223mm - Tags
- Soft Jiang-flavour Chinese spirits, Real vintage, Guijiu 20
- Production Technology
- Combined with traditional totems and modern craftsmanship, it reflects a dual pursuit of quality and culture by the brand. The bottle is made of high-transparency glass with a metallic cap, highlighting the high-end texture. The pattern of the bottle is composed of butterflies, phoenixes, birds, fish and other auspicious totems, which are shown in three-dimensional relief, symbolizing good luck and prosperity, and a year's supply of surplus. The label design integrates Guizhou's national landscape culture, with multi-colored blocks to show the regional characteristics, and integrates the brand's genes to convey the unique positioning of soft jiang-flavour. The square and round shape of the bottle symbolizes harmony and perfection, while the annual ring element highlights the sense of vintage, reinforcing the value attributes of the product as an aged liquor.
- Design Challenge
- The first challenge is that the similar products of this brand choose traditional shape of cylindrical bottles for older products, which has become a representative in consumers' mind, and blue is also a color rarely used for similar liquor products, so it is a challenge to establish a new product image against the traditional market and consumer cognition. The second challenge is the use of the bottle material, through a breakthrough technology of surface treatment to make the glass bottle with ceramic noble texture, and greatly reduces the cost of the bottle.
- Project Duration
- The project launched in February 2021 and release to market in June 2024
- Operation Flow
- Helping consumers find the ideal product was the key challenge in this project. The unique square shape of the bottle gives consumers a sense of grip that is unlike any other product of its kind, while the distinctive color and shape also make it easy for consumers to identify and pick up the product.
- Research
- In the Chinese baijiu market, jiang-flavour Chinese spirits products usually adopt cylinder-shaped bottles and brown color tones for market acceptance. The question is how to break the prejudice against traditional products and better convey the region and folk culture of the region.
- Inspiration
- Motivated by the unique human spirit and natural landscape of Guizhou, China. Through refining the traditional patterns and natural symbols of local ethnic minorities. It creates a baijiu product with brand characteristics and deep integration of local culture. It adopts the annual rings and the lines of local terraces to express the concept of vintage and regional cultural characteristics clearly.
- Image Credits
- Guizhou Guijiu Group Co., Ltd