Aquetha Branding and Packaging by Tacto Inc. is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2024 Silver A' Design Award in Packaging Design Competition Category.
SilverPackaging· 2024
Aquetha Branding and Packaging
by Tacto Inc.
Client: Tacto Inc
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Packaging Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #158293The Design
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.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Aquetha Branding and Packaging 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. Aquetha Branding and Packaging 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. Aquetha Branding and Packaging is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Strategic Brand Experience Design Services
We transform brands through strategic design consulting centered on compelling storytelling. Our expertise spans brand identity, packaging design, and digital experiences. From uncovering hidden value to crafting premium positioning, we create meaningful connections between brands and audiences.
Discuss Your ProjectBehind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- 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. The selection of works for the second and subsequent editions is already underway, as they have been well-received by Western liquor fans and young people who were previously unable to approach aged sake.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Bottle: width 110mm × depths110mm × height150mm
Package: width135mm × depth135mm × height 165mm - Tags
- Packaging, Product Design, Website
- Production 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. they created a dent on the border between the lid and the main body to express the aging timeline, creating a luxurious feel that incorporates the delicate image of the work.
A website that acts more like a gallery than EC site.
On the website, design team aimed to create a gallery-like space where the consumer could "feel" the work rather than "buying" the product. AQUETHA's greatest feature, the delicacy that matures slowly over time, is expressed through white-based visuals and delicate lines. The spacious design creates a clean, simple and sophisticated image. - Design 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.
- 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.
- Project Duration
- 2months, Tokyo, Japan
- Operation Flow
- 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.
- Team Members
- Creative Director: Hayato Itakura
Strategist/Copy Writer: Takuro Nakajima
Art Director: Kohei Futakuchi
Visual Designer: Kazuya Sakamoto - Image Credits
- Photographer: Masato Ishibashi
Glass Artist: Yutaro Kijima
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