Expo West ‘23 Recap

My take on some of the design trends that caught my eye amongst the exhibitors. I always find creating these comprehensive lists hard to wrap my head around and it always bugs me that they can’t capture EVERYTHING that was there - but I’ve tried my best to provide some insight in 5 overarching themes noticed on the show floor. Hat tip to my show (and life) brother Kirk for walking the aisles with me. His curiosity and ideas helped me craft this list as well. Let’s go!

Power to the People:

One thing that (I think) international cuisine packaging design has struggled with is proper representation of the culture that has insipred the product within. “Oh a taco shell- lets throw a rustic archway and some evocative type” or “Oh stir-fry mix - let’s throw a picture of chopsticks…” and so on. You see where I’m going with this - probably because most of the packaging I’m referring to was developed by white men on Madison Ave. Well that is slowly starting to change - with brands and products being brought to market by the very people they come from. These new brands are founded by, source ingredients and products from, and use culturally unique imagery developed by native artists and designers on their packaging. It’s refreshing to see this “new” take on indigenous cuisine packaging design. I say “new” because they’re incorporating traditional ancient design elements to evoke the rich culrures these foods come from.