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2019 Student Design Challenge

If we are going to thrive as an industry, we have to educate the next generation of package designers about all of the wonderful uses of paperboard. It’s that simple.

To that end, PPC teams up with the American Forest and Paper Association each year to put on the Paperboard Packaging Alliance’s Student Design Challenge. This competition allows students from leading packaging programs to tackle real-world design problems and show off their skills—all through the canvas of renewable, recyclable paperboard.

The Design Challenge has taken off since its creation in 2004. In fact, last year, more than 190 students competed from 13 leading packaging and graphic design programs. Top institutions like California Polytechnic State University, Clemson University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, and Rochester Institute of Technology regularly participate in this exciting program.

Each year, we give the students a unique, real-world design problem to solve, and the 2019 scenario looks to be an exciting one. This year, the students must design packaging for a gaming system that enhances the unboxing experience and can be used while playing the video game.

Here’s the prompt (which sounds quite fun):

A top gaming company is releasing its newest gaming console and wants the package to be 100 percent paper-based. The package needs to house the console and one video game controller.

The package should have innovative functional distinctions that enhance the customer’s unboxing experience and set it apart from competing products. It should be optimally designed to protect and secure the products during shipping and handling and be able to be used while playing the video game.

The structural and functional design must enhance brand recognition and influence users to become loyal customers.

In supporting documentation, designers should address ways in which the gaming company can expand the packaging concept to sell its gaming console in traditional retail stores and marketing strategies to encourage repeat buying of the company’s products.

The gaming company shares the paperboard packaging industry’s commitment to sustainability. Therefore, the package should communicate recyclability and highlight paperboard packaging as a preferred substrate.

For the first time last year, we flew the top three teams to our Fall Meeting in Atlanta. There we announced the top winner, and the students shared their projects and met potential employers in the paperboard packaging industry (see photo of some of the students, professors, and industry professionals at right). It was a fantastic experience for the students and industry professionals alike, and we plan to do the same again in 2019!

If you have connections at a university packaging program, we strongly encourage you to help them get involved! Visit the 2019 Student Design Challenge webpage for more information.