Bend the bottle's neck. Verallia.

A customer sits down by the conference table with a designer equipped with a computer and  proper software for designing  bottles. Multimedia projector forwards the image from the computer creen to the one placed on the wall. At this point the most diffucult phase begins: the designer needs to put all efforts to make the customer’s vision alive. On the other hand, the customer must face the technology that somewhat limits their imagination.

The customer wants the bottle neck to be more bent but the designer claims that it will make the glass thinner and the bottle may crack. In some other case the customer is unable to explain what colour they mean and the designer needs to go through the entire colour palette. When those two finally achieve compromise and 3D bottle image appears on the screen it is time to work on the details. This is a task for the artists who use both basic manual tools and specialised software. They try different patterns, colours and materials. Then the bottle’s prototype is created and forwarded to the customer. This procedure is often repeated many times before the client finally says: “This is it!” Only then the project can go to production. If the bottle is supposed to be dedicated to, let’s say, champagne it needs to be done very quickly. This delicate drink cannot remain in barrels longer than a week after it gets a proper flavour. It needs to be bottled, but in order to do it the bottle producer must provide containers on time.

The thirteenth design apostle

The above situation is a typical work scenario at Creativ’ Lab – the design centre that Verallia opened some time ago in Pont-Sainte-Maxence near Paris. Owing to this the local glass packaging manufacturer Saga Décor, where bottles from Verallia’s Selective Line are produced, can fulfill their customers ideas from A to Z. Selective Line is based on three pillars: Collection (a series of ready bottles that can be ordered from a catalogue), Creativ’ Lab (design centre, where new designs are created) and Tailor-made (a design service for individual customers including full support for the customer during the entire production process).

Creativ’ Lab, located near Paris, is a thirteenth design centre of this type opened by Verallia. The other centres are located in France: Albi and Chalon-sur- Saône; Germany: Bad Wurzach, Russia: Kamyszyn; in Madrid; in Portuguese Figueira da Foz; in Unkrainian Zoria; US Muncie, Indiana; in São Paulo; in Mendoza, Argentina; and in Italian cities of Gazzo Veronese and Diego. “Eurovelux in Gniezno, being Verallia’s branch, where we produce our bottles, closely cooperates with a design centre in Ukraine” – says Axel Guilloteau, vice president for Selective Line. “Thanks to this cooperation we can efficiently manage the Central European market. It happens that our competitors’ customers ask us to prepare the design, although the actual bottle is going to be manufactured somewhere else. For us it’s a confirmation of our creativity.”

Foto: © Verallia