Lisa Cain
Author
About
Design strategist and writer specialising in sustainable packaging. She contributes to BP&O, exploring how design and innovation shape packaging.
SourceIn their own words
Neo-brutalism has become one of the clearest packaging trends of the past two years.
Black Helvetica on yellow has been sitting on supermarket shelves since 1978.
Few packaging categories have created a secondary product dedicated to accessing the primary one. That alone says something.
Tube keys have survived for nearly fifty years. If the problem had gone away, so would they.
The new identity pushes harder into the sensory overload people already associated with the brand, but now there’s more structure behind it.
Fizzy pop is supposed to be fun.
Most packaging looks like someone tried to squeeze a TED Talk onto a postage stamp.
Once a brand commits to one idea, space stops being decoration and starts acting as strategy.
Articles & interviews
- Pentagram crafts Parla identity inspired by 1960s and 70s Italy
Pentagram created the identity for Parla, an all-day café and pizzeria on New York's Upper West Side. The work draws on Italian graphic design of the 1960s and 1970s, using bold typography and geometric forms across menus and packaging to give the neighbourhood venue a memorable but approachable character.
- Center designs Riff packaging for shelf-stable meal range
Center created packaging for Riff, a shelf-stable pasta and noodle meal range created by chef Daniel Humm and CPG entrepreneur Mark Ramadan. The design uses an oversized Riff logo, a food-forward composition and colour-coded product variants, with its palette partly inspired by Humm's vegetable watercolours.
- Cocktail Recipe Cards Make Mixology Simple and Stylish
Lisa Cain discusses The Cocktail Cabinet, a cocktail-recipe card deck designed by Australian studio A Friend of Mine. Using the Negroni as an analogy, the article argues that effective packaging design depends on balancing the contribution of every component rather than pursuing minimalism for its own sake.