Responses by Alejandro Gavancho, designer and art director, Magno Studio.
Background: The primary goal was to help Starrytale, a skincare brand we have collaborated with for years, successfully expand into the fine fragrance market with Wonder Aroma Odyssey. The target audience consists of Starrytale’s highly loyal community, customers who value the brand not only for product quality but also for the distinct, magical aesthetic we’ve helped build for it over time. Our challenge was to ensure the new collection carried that familiar brand mysticism while standing on its own with a completely independent, premium identity.
Design thinking: We wanted the packaging to immediately spark curiosity on the retail shelf and tell a unique story for each of Starrytale’s seven scents. The unboxing experience was designed to unfold layer by layer; a bold, colorful outer sleeve opens to reveal a stark, minimalist box with clean conceptual printing. Inside, the actual perfume bottle acts as a discovery, almost like opening a chest to find a diamond. We deliberately embraced contrast, playing with a smaller, delicate bottle size against a larger exterior structured frame, combined with striking black labels and caps to reflect our studio’s signature style.
Challenges: Designing the bespoke glass bottle entirely from scratch was definitely the hardest part. Although we’ve developed custom glass shapes before, every country brings different technical manufacturing parameters. Even after the initial project approval, we had to completely redesign the bottle format because a delicate design element in the first version proved too fragile during technical testing. It was a steep learning curve in structural constraints for smaller capacities, but adapting to these functional needs actually pushed us to a final silhouette that we love even more than our original concept.
Favorite details: I am incredibly proud of the final bottle because it represents our very first custom perfume bottle designed from the ground up, achieved entirely through remote collaboration between our studio in Leeds, United Kingdom, and the client in Hong Kong. Managing multiple specialized manufacturers for a single piece—one for the unique glass silhouette, another for the custom spherical cap and a third for the delicate metal neck chain—was a massive undertaking. Seeing every distinct component align perfectly to match the client’s initial brief completely exceeded our expectations.
Specific project demands: The profound creative trust our client placed in us was the ultimate catalyst for the project’s success. It gave us the confidence to propose an unconventional, color-blocked packaging system that is quite bold and clean for the traditionally romantic imagery of the perfume category. This level of freedom wasn't accidental; it’s the result of building a strong relationship over years of working together, which eliminated the creative friction that often slows down complex beauty and cosmetics projects.
Alternate paths: In hindsight, I would integrate technical and functional manufacturing assessments much earlier in the initial ideation phase to avoid losing time on unviable structures. Today, the rise of AI-generated, fiction-focused design concepts creates a distorted reality where hyperrealistic but physically impossible packaging floods platforms like Pinterest, setting unfeasible client expectations. This project reminded us that as packaging designers, our true value lies in balancing bold, tactile experimentation with rigorous structural realism from day one.
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