Bronze Packaging Design · 2025
Mahjong Lucky Coffee Packaging
by Wenduan Su
- A' Design Award 2025 Bronze Winner in Packaging Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Shenzhen Technology Unversity
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 14,663
- Verification code D08AF20A30 · Verify this award
About Mahjong Lucky Coffee Packaging
Mahjong Lucky Coffee is a coffee packaging design inspired by mahjong, a traditional Chinese game. Each bag holds one month of coffee, which is equal to two hands of mahjong tiles. One hand is arranged as a winning hand. The second hand is completed by the buyer, because every portion of coffee is drawn like a tile and the pattern stays unknown until the portion is opened. Bold orange and red colors and youthful lettering address young consumers. Two flavors are offered. The packaging turns a daily habit into a game.
Wenduan Su's Mahjong Lucky Coffee Packaging presents an inventive synthesis of traditional gaming heritage and contemporary beverage culture, wherein the designer has reimagined coffee packaging through the dimensional vocabulary and modular logic of the recreational tile tradition, creating a product system that functions simultaneously as consumer goods container and cultural conversation piece. The formal execution demonstrates considerable compositional intelligence, with each package unit precisely calibrated to evoke the proportional relationships, stackable modularity, and tactile appeal of its gaming precedent while accommodating the functional requirements of single-serve coffee portion containment and brand communication surface. The chromatic strategy proves particularly effective, deploying a vibrant coral-orange as dominant brand color that conveys energetic approachability and visual warmth while distinguishing the product within competitive retail environments, complemented by pristine white providing typographic clarity and sage-green with terracotta-red tile-face illustrations that reference traditional suit iconography without requiring explicit gaming literacy for aesthetic appreciation. The transparent acrylic display case with bronze-toned handle visible in the middle-ground configuration elevates the presentation beyond ordinary packaging into gift-set territory, suggesting occasions of social exchange, celebration, and the honoring of relationships through considered material culture, the protective housing simultaneously preserving the package assemblage and framing it as object worthy of preservation and display. Technically, the design succeeds in balancing multiple objectives: maintaining structural integrity and functional performance as beverage container, achieving sufficient surface area for required product information and brand messaging, creating modular units that stack and align with satisfying precision echoing the tactile pleasure of the gaming reference, and establishing distinctive shelf presence through unexpected formal substitution that invites consumer curiosity and engagement. The conceptual gesture underlying the work carries particular resonance within cultural contexts where the referenced game holds deep social significance as facilitator of gathering, conversation, leisure, and interpersonal connection across generations, the packaging design thus activating associations extending beyond mere caffeinated beverage into realms of community, tradition, hospitality, and shared experience. The typographic treatment visible on package faces maintains clarity and legibility while respecting the overall formal restraint of the design system, allowing the dimensional tile metaphor to remain primary communicator of brand personality and cultural positioning rather than competing with excessive graphic elaboration. Material choices suggest quality positioning through the substantial feel implied by the matte paperboard construction, the visual and tactile luxury introduced by transparent protective housing, and the warm metallic accent of the handle element that adds premium coding without ostentation. The scattered loose tiles in the foreground configuration introduce playful energy and suggest the possibility of reconfiguration, personalization, and active engagement with the packaging system beyond passive consumption, transforming the container into potential collectible object or display element that persists in the domestic environment after the beverage contents have been consumed, extending brand presence and reinforcing positive associations through continued material presence. One might contemplate how this design approach represents broader contemporary strategies in commercial packaging that seek to add experiential value, cultural resonance, and post-consumption utility to container systems, transforming disposable packaging into objects of aesthetic appreciation, cultural conversation, and perhaps even nostalgic preservation, while simultaneously honoring traditional forms by translating them into new functional contexts that introduce heritage elements to new audiences and usage occasions.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- draws inspiration from the Chinese quintessence of Mahjong. The combination of Mahjong and coffee is full of gamification, making the coffee packaging more interesting. Mahjong is becoming more and more popular among young people, so the font design of Mahjong is more youthful, and the color is boldly matched, orange-red - food color. A bag of coffee is exactly one month's supply, which is two hands of cards. One hand of cards is designed to be a good hand in the hope of bringing good luck to the buyer, and the other hand needs to be completed by the buyer through the interactive action of drinking coffee every time, which has the attributes of a blind box. It increases playability and repurchase.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The test model was completed using 3D printing and origami techniques.
- Tags
- Coffee packaging, mahjong culture,gamification design,Chinese traditional culture
- Production Technology
- Mold Injection,Origami
- Design Challenge
- Mahjong and coffee are combined, and the interactive design of the actions is the same, drawing coffee is the same as drawing a mahjong tile
- Project Duration
- Design will start in Shenzhen in December 2023 and will be exhibited in the university exhibition hall
- Operation Flow
- Users drink a cup of coffee every day and draw a portion of coffee, which is very similar to drawing cards in a mahjong game. Each card is full of unknowns. After drinking the coffee, different card patterns can be arranged to win the game, just like winning a mahjong game. And mahjong coffee has two flavors to choose from.
- Research
- Because mahjong is fun and interesting. In China, mahjong culture is becoming more and more popular among young people. Mahjong culture appears in many aspects of life, and mahjong games are gradually being recognized and loved by people from all over the world. We want to design something for the mahjong culture that everyone loves.
- Inspiration
- Drawing inspiration from the Chinese quintessence of Mahjong, the combination of Mahjong and coffee, full of gamification, makes coffee more interesting