Young students win packaging awards

The school awards, now in their 13th year, form part of the annual Starpack Awards program, which also includes the Starpack Industry Awards and the Student Starpack Packaging Design Awards for colleges and universities.

The 2014 Schools Starpack Packaging Design Awards program featured three design briefs that students in the UK school years 10, 11 and AS Level (aged 15-17) were tasked to come up with packaging to suit. This included the ‘Movie night with friends’ design brief, sponsored by Benson Group, with the challenge to design a pack that combines two snacks in a fun and creative way to share within a group.

In this brief, the task was set to create a packaging design that showcased the products, had a clear brand identity and attracted a purchase, and is fun to ‘use and create a sharing element’. Further, school students were asked to consider the end of life of the packaging – can it be reused or recycled?

Entries were asked to predominantly use cartonboard, alongside other materials if required to create the pack.

Following judging earlier this year, gold, silver, bronze and commended framed certificates were awarded.    

In the ‘Movie night with friends’, Connor Wallace of Collingwood College won the gold prize, with Alice Metcalf (Kingston Grammar School) and Jaimin Mistry (The City of Leicester College) taking silver and bronze respectively. Phoebe Young (Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School), James Stanley – (Reigate School of Art, Design & Media) Patryk Zak (New College, Swindon), Alice Clelland (Collingwood College), Abu-Bakr Razzaque (The City of Leicester College), Jenae Walker (The City of Leicester College), Mehul Jethwa (The City of Leicester College), James Parslow (The de Ferrers Academy), Bryony Brimble (Farnborough Sixth Form College), Waldo Olwage (Farnborough Sixth Form College) and Muhammad Siddiq (The City of Leicester College) were highly commended.

See full details of the 2014 Schools Starpack Packaging Design Awards here.

Benson Group also awarded 500 GBP to the school which provided the best overall cartonboard entries, with Farnborough Sixth Form College taking the prize.

Farnborough Sixth Form College has been a regular in the competition for more than a decade and encourages all of its AS students to take part in the competition very year.  

Commenting on behalf of Farnborough College, Bob Dunn said: ‘The Starpack competition has been instrumental in inspiring our graphics students to produce quality outcomes to the variety of briefs set by the Institute of Packaging. The students that have won awards have been inspired by the recognition of their work by industry specialists. This being the case, we are extremely grateful for companies such as Benson Group that have supported the Starpack competition and provided generous awards to the students. Consequently it is pleasing to report that a number our students have gone on to become packaging designers.’