With consumer segmentation accelerating, the target audiences for food and beverage brands are more diverse than ever—spanning generations, lifestyles, and value systems, with increasingly refined demands. Against this backdrop, how can packaging precisely resonate with the aesthetics and value orientations of distinct consumer segments? In the instant interplay between rational choice and emotional impulse, how can brands compel different groups to pause and engage? Grounded in consumer insight, brands can systematize color, structure, and cultural codes to build packaging strategies tailored to varied demographics and consumption contexts. 

Research shows that purchase decisions made in front of the shelf are rarely the result of rational analysis. In fact, within just 0.3 seconds, the brain forms a subconscious judgment. Color, shape, material, and the way information is presented all influence how consumers instinctively perceive taste, quality, and trust.

This session explores packaging design through the lens of neuroscience, revealing how the brain processes visual cues, forms instant impressions, and drives purchase behavior at first glance. By analyzing popular packaging cases on the market, it uncovers what they get right at a perceptual level, while also highlighting "counter-intuitive" design pitfalls that can trigger instinctive resistance. Through this training, brand and design teams will learn how to communicate taste and value more effectively, making packaging work harder with less effort.

From material selection and structural development to prototyping and mass production, packaging involves multiple suppliers and complex processes. Limited transparency, high communication costs, and long development cycles often become hidden bottlenecks for product innovation. Digital platforms are changing this. By integrating packaging factories, equipment, and technical resources, and enabling tools such as online factory audits, intelligent supplier matching, and supply chain collaboration, brands can identify the right partners more efficiently and speed up packaging development. This session will explore key efficiency challenges in the packaging supply chain and how digital platforms help brands bring innovations to market faster.

Packaging is more than an information carrie. It can have a human personality. In a world of information overload, emotion, not logic, captures attention. Designs that connect emotionally convey a brand story most authentically.

(Source: Koichi Kosugi)

Make the product the main character, give it expressions and a setting, and hide a "tiny" bit of detail, then illustration can bring food to life. From HBAF nuts to SAJO’s 365.24 series, Korean designer Jung Eun captures brand personality through her human-touch illustration style. Within these cartoon figures, you can almost see the flavor, ingredients, even the making and eating process of the food itself.

(Source: HBAF)

In today's image-driven F&B market, type is more than information, it conveys brand emotion. With deep industry expertise, FounderType provides professional typography solutions that enhance product premiumization and recognition. FounderType will present the application aesthetics of F&B typography and introduces TigerPanandFounderType, a packaging typeface co-created with designer Tiger Pan. Blending handwritten expression with commercial precision, it helps brands break visual sameness and shows how typography can become a silent salesperson.

PepsiCo, a brand always close to youth culture, has recently updated its visual identity, from the "smile" logo to the sunny Fanta emblem. Each refresh preserves core brand assets while creating a look and feel that resonates with contemporary aesthetics and culture. Brand refresh is not about chasing trends, but understanding the audience and forging new ways to communicate. Using Mirinda's latest refresh as a case study, we'll explore the design logic and strategic approach behind Pepsi’s youth-focused branding.

(Source: PepsiCo)

Blue Bottle Coffee is famous for its minimalism, but the real story is that founder James Freeman didn't want a brand at all. He wanted people to walk in, taste the coffee, and feel changed by it. Nothing more. Danielle's talk will walk us through that history: what began as a scrappy farmers market coffee stand in Oakland, California, with only a blue bottle logo hand-painted by a friend on a simple kraft bag, grew into something that needed a real design system. In 2014, Danielle Harris joined as the company's first in-house designer, inheriting that humble symbol and tasked with translating James's vision of "no brand" into one that could scale. What the world now calls iconic minimalism was really just a disciplined refusal to add noise. That, it turns out, is the hardest brief of all.

Private labels first emerged in Europe in the last century. Compared with national brands, they have typically been positioned around strong value for money, mass appeal, and consistent quality, becoming a core pillar of modern retail systems. Unlike the price-led strategies seen in more mature markets, China’s private labels are increasingly defined by premiumisation, curated selection, and differentiated innovation.

Drawing on over 20 years of global insight and experience from partnering with some of the world’s most beloved retailers—including Target, Waitrose, Aldi, Carrefour, CVS, BJ's, and Fortnum & Mason—Jonathan will share three key principles to unlock the "three leaps" in private label design systems, grounded in both global practice and China’s evolving retail landscape.

For many beverages sensitive to contamination, canned packaging has traditionally relied on retort processing—heating sealed cans to ensure safety. While effective, this high-temperature treatment can affect taste and aroma and may limit formulation options. To reduce heat exposure and better preserve product quality, GEA developed the AseptiCan aseptic can filling system. It enables high-acid or low-acid beverages, still or carbonated, to be filled into aluminum cans under aseptic conditions. This session will explore how aseptic can filling technology can be applied in beverage production, how it expands formulation flexibility for brands, and how it supports different can formats.

In the food industry, fewer than 5% of new products succeed despite heavy investment. As price competition intensifies, innovation is key—but how can it be brought to market faster and more reliably? How can promising products win the “last mile” of launch? Packaging and supply chain capabilities play a critical role.

This session brings together 15+ brand packaging leaders and 15+ equipment and packaging suppliers to explore key factors across the development process, from R&D to collaboration models—identifying what drives speed and success in product launches.

Brands will gain clearer strategies for supply chain collaboration, while suppliers will better understand brand needs and market dynamics. By breaking silos and reshaping partnerships, the industry can move from isolated optimization to true co-creation, improving the success rate of new products.