What better way to demonstrate the qualities of a folding boxboard than to produce packaging for a gift of chocolate treats? Discover the story of our recent Easter gifting project, through which luxury and sustainability is combined.
What better way to demonstrate the qualities of a folding boxboard than to produce packaging for a gift of chocolate treats? Discover the story of our recent Easter gifting project, through which luxury and sustainability is combined.
Our Easter gifting project
Incada is a beautiful folding boxboard that lends itself well to the creation of a host of graphical and packaging applications. What’s more, it is made right here in the UK resulting in a reduced carbon footprint when selecting Incada Silk or Incada Exel.
While Incada is ideal for a variety of packaging applications, from pharma and healthcare to cosmetics and food, our recent project was Easter themed, which presented an ideal opportunity for us to take advantage of the product’s food-safe certification* and create packaging for chocolate gifts!
The packaging was carefully designed for multiple purposes: to showcase Incada’s printability, compatibility and convertibility, share information about its features, benefits and sustainability, and to be practical yet suitably luxurious to convey the quality of the gift; delivering a satisfying and pleasurable unboxing experience!
Creating the packaging
Working with brilliant cardboard engineer partners Inkmark, we came up with a sled and sleeve design, which slides open neatly to reveal three bars of chocolate.
We decided upon Incada Silk in 300gsm/485mic for its soft sheen and premium feel, as well as for its light weight and stiffness qualities – important considerations when creating packaging that will be posted.
For the gift itself, we chose luxury chocolate from vegan and gluten-free snack brand Rhythm 108, who create great tasting treats made from ethical recipes with responsibly sourced cocoa. We selected three flavours to be included in each gift, each with a correspondingly coloured wrapper.
The colours featured in the chocolate bar wrappers fuelled inspiration for the artwork, for which a springtime feel, rather than using traditional Easter imagery, was the aim. Together with the bright, sunny colours from the Rhythm 108 branding, we used soft green shades found in nature. The selected palette allows the gold foil effect to stand out, whilst evoking an elegant feel. Gold was also used to highlight the personalisation, adding a special touch and surprise element upon opening the package.
The printing
Incada Silk is a GC1 folding boxboard with a silk coating on the front and a lick-coated reverse, making both sides well-suited to full print coverage. We demonstrated this by flooding both sides of the packaging with ink of various shades. The quality of Incada’s surface means there is no unsightly cracking on the creases and folds, and the printed text included is crisp and easily legible, even with a small font.
The packaging was litho printed on a Heidelberg press using Alpha Eco vegetable-based inks. The gold foil effect is a digital enhancement created using a B2 Scodix™ Ultra Foil press.
Luxurious and sustainable packaging
Sustainability was an essential consideration in creating our luxury packaging.
FSC® certified, the Incada range offers high quality, multi-layered folding boxboards made from fresh fibres of known and traceable origin. As the only folding boxboard manufactured in the UK, Incada is made at a site in Cumbria which is largely self-sufficient in renewable thermal and electrical energy. Incada is stiff and lightweight with higher yield than other, comparable products on the market, such as Solid Bleached Board (SBB) or recycled products, and therefore achieves a reduction in fibre consumption and transportation weight; all of which contributes to a more sustainable product, with no compromise on quality, strength or printability.
The packaging we created is also fully recyclable in standard kerbside paper recycling. We chose Scodix™ Foil for the gold detailing as it is a non-toxic, recyclable polymer free of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), polluting additives or dangerous compounds.
What the recipients thought
We received some great feedback from recipients, who loved their chocolate Easter gift in bespoke, personalised luxury packaging:
It was such a treat to receive the beautiful Easter Gift! Once I opened the outer packaging and saw the gold foiling running across the illustrated design I knew I was handling a high-quality luxury gift. The handy tabs, part of the smooth sliding mechanism to help you open the package, added to the sense of mystery, surprise and delight; first unveiling a special personalised message using gold embellishments, and inside the three bars of Vegan Swiss chocolate wrapped in colours that pop - I was as excited about the chocolates as I was about the package! You can’t go wrong with a gift of chocolate and when the packaging is so beautifully thought through and produced with the customer in mind, while taking into account careful consideration of the sustainability merits of the materials and finishing touches that elevate, it becomes a truly wonderful gift!
Veronica Heaven, Sustainability Communication Consultancy and Founder of Brief Cases
Product Information
Incada is a range of high quality, multi-layered folding boxboards made from fresh fibres of known and traceable origin. The range, which includes Incada Exel as well as Incada Silk, offers paperboards ideal for a multitude of graphical applications and also for packaging of various goods, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, food and drinks.
*Incada is food certified: C1935/2004, EC 2023/2006, FDA 21 CFR, German BfR XXXVI and Normpack.
