Studio 101 West Design & Marketing Makes the Top 10% in the Country!
I am excited to announce that two of the packages that we designed for EverRest have won the 2026 Graphic Design USA Packaging Design Awards. The TPEzone Core Relief Topper box and the Travel-On Roll Up Travel Pillow box take the prize this year! Out of more than 2,500 entries this year, the competition honors roughly 10 percent as winners. Wow! Hard work pays off.
Packaging Design for a Global Market
Designing for 3-dimensional packaging is one of my favorite things to do. Surprisingly, I do a lot of private-label branding for clients I have never met. My client, Danican, ties together the entire manufacturing process from product concept to global logistics and handles all face-to-face interactions with their clients (like EverRest) who are distributors and retail buyers. Our studio is their design and marketing partner, delivering product branding, illustration, packaging, point-of-purchase displays, support materials, and sometimes even textile design.
As in fashion design, bedding products are reimagined with the seasons and the advent of new technology. This demands that packaging design for an array of products be new and fresh annually, or even biannually for some.
Danican is a Danish company that creates products with Scandinavian sensibilities for Asian, European, and American markets. Consequently, our job is to understand vastly different cultures and produce work that appeals to diverse consumers’ wallets.
The Complete Package
The first award-winning packaging design is for the TPzone Core Relief Topper, which stands just under 30 inches tall. This mattress topper is packed with new features, which required illustrating new icons to sell those great features. I also created the TPzone product logo, which highlights the honeycomb material that offers extra support and cooling.
Photo Manipulation to Build a Cool Concept
Award number two goes to this cooling technology pillow packaging. I especially enjoyed working on this design for the Travel-On Roll Up Travel Pillow package. The front of the box used two of Studio 101 West’s own stock photographs, plus an AI-generated image. The tent was one image, the river bank with rocks and trees another. Then, with a lot of descriptive instructions, AI created a mountain Alps scene for the distance background. I took all three of those images and blended them into one dramatic camping-in-the-cold-outdoors image. My illustration background allows me to blend images so seamlessly that most people never notice the edits. Knowing how to build light and shadow in the correct perspective is the difference between good “faking it” and bad “faking it.”
This product sells in South Korea at Emart, a big-box store like our Costco.
To see more of our award-winning work, check out our portfolio.
