The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
-Pierre Corneille, Le Menteur
Few places understand packaging as well as the Japanese. At its best it is the perfect combination of protection, presentation and beauty. This example is a late 19th - early 20th century straw-wrapped presentation of charcoal with a perfectly placed window in the wrapping which frames the end grain of a single piece of charcoal.
The Japanese continue to excel at packaging, the best of which generally falls into two categories; clean and designed within an inch of its life, and then cute. The following examples are juice boxes for banana, strawberry, kiwi and milk by the Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa. They lean towards the cute side, but are still quite clever and do exactly what packaging is suppose to do.
via: packaging of the world.com & toxel.com
The cover of the book How to Wrap Five Eggs. A good book with traditional wrappings and presentations. If your interested I've got an amazon link to it in my Books I Like box below.
