Ioanna Souflia’s design prize proves good things come in small packages

Earlier this month, the Greek-born jewellery designer Ioanna Souflia won third place in the luxury category of the Dieline Awards, a yearly initiative celebrating the best in consumer product packaging. For Souflia, who only presented her debut collection at London Fashion Week in S/S 2015, the award is a nod to a designer who thinks outside the box. Her packaging designs were made in collaboration with the Sheffield-based design agency Lyon & Lyon.

Souflia, who trained initially as a lawyer, explains that contradiction lies at the centre of her design approach. ‘The antithesis of the logic required in law and the imagination required in jewellery has become the focal point of my aesthetic,’ she says. ‘I’ve chosen to create pieces which incorporate an array of diverse elements.’ Her ‘Symbiosis Ring’ is one such piece, crafted in polished black gold, and inlaid with panels of Thasos marble, that Souflia carves herself.

‘Contradictory harmony’ is also integral to Souflia’s packaging design. Her trapezoid ‘Small Box’ features a smooth upper box and a Wibalin Fluted textured bottom. ‘We have created a monolith shape, where my jewellery inside is presented upright,’ Souflia explains. ‘The monolith idea derives from the raw form of marble, a key material used in my first collections... the contradiction in volume from the bottom to the top of the packaging also gives a sense of natural progression, and is a symbol of how a raw material is gradually crafted into a piece of jewellery.’

Souflia has also designed a rectangular ‘Outer Box’, which houses the ‘Small Box’. It features a kaleidoscopic sweep of colour on its lid. ‘Placing this spectrum of colour inside the outer box creates an excitement before the final step of revealing the jewellery enclosed inside,’ Souflia says. ‘The packaging serves its purpose as a protective shelter for my jewellery, without losing its ability to stand as a design object on its own.’

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Ioanna Souflia website, the Dieline website and the Lyon & Lyon website