Wu Xing Package by Siwei Lai is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 Silver A' Design Award in Packaging Design Competition Category.
SilverPackaging· 2022
Wu Xing Package
by Siwei Lai
Client: Huyu
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Packaging Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #127379The Design
About Wu Xing Package
The series of work Wu Xing use animals as a interpretation and categorize as five elements according to their characteristics. Among them, to emphasize the cycle of symbiosis in Wu Xing, designers added the sunrise and the sunset in each illustration, representing the beginning and the end of the day. The painting box is the main structure development, showing a sense of hardcover and classic. From the book-shaped box to the unfolding to the packaging structure that independently becomes the display rack. In this special package structure, each card can be fully displayed.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Wu Xing Package is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Wu Xing Package is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Wu Xing Package is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Creative Packaging Design Services
We specialize in innovative packaging design that combines striking visual identity with functional structural solutions. From concept to production, we create packaging that tells your brand story while solving practical display and transportation challenges.
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Grand Interview
Your innovative integration of traditional Wu Xing elements with modern packaging design has earned Wu Xing Package the Silver A' Design Award - could you share the conceptual journey that led to this harmonious blend of cultural philosophy and contemporary design?
At its core, the Wu Xing Package is not a reinterpretation of tradition, but a re-engagement. I didn’t want to modernize the five elements—I wanted to invite people to feel their rhythm again. Instead of treating Wu Xing as static symbols, I viewed them as cycles, relationships, and transformations. The package thus becomes a temporal and spatial object, simultaneously holding memory, time, and ritual.
The Wu Xing Package features a remarkable transformation from book-shaped box to display rack - what inspired this dual-functionality approach, and how did you overcome the engineering challenges to achieve this seamless conversion?
The idea came from the notion that cultural concepts should not only be stored, but displayed—lived with. A book can be shelved, but the five elements should be present, visible, and contemplated. The challenge was structural: how to fold, hold, and support the transformation without adding unnecessary components. It took dozens of paper-engineering mockups to arrive at a mechanism that was both intuitive and durable.
Your incorporation of sunrise and sunset imagery within the Wu Xing Package creates a powerful metaphor for cycles and transitions - could you elaborate on how this temporal element enhances the storytelling aspect of your five elements concept?
The sunrise and sunset motif frames Wu Xing not just as philosophical ideas, but as daily experiences. Metal and Water might feel abstract—but dawn and dusk are universally felt. By embedding the package in a day’s passage, we’re reminding people that the five elements aren’t external—they’re part of our breath, routines, and emotions.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The painting box is the main structure development, showing a sense of hardcover and classic. From the book-shaped box to the unfolding to the packaging structure that independently becomes the display rack. In this special package structure, each card of this work “Wu Xing“ can be fully displayed.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Outer box size: W18×L27×H4 cm; The size of the display stand after unfolding: W53×H22.5×D9 cm
- Tags
- Visual Identity, packaging structure, printed matter
- Design Challenge
- In order for the cards to be fully displayed at one time and to reduce the volume during packaging and transportation. We tested and adjusted many times to have been carried out on the display of the packaging and the folding structure.
- Research
- Our research included: 1. Communications with the client. 2. Defined the tone and manner of the brand 3. Structural packaging design, test, and revise the structure. 4. Visual design.
- Inspiration
- This work “Wu Xing“ presents a series of works that categorize these five elements according to their characteristics, and from my own perspective to use animals as a representative interpretation. Among them, in order to emphasize the cycle of gram and symbiosis in the five elements, I added the sunrise and the sunset in each illustration, representing the beginning and the end of the day.
- Project Duration
- The project started in January 2021 and finished in April 2021, in Taichung City, Taiwan.
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