Innovation Awards spotlight | The lantern of time
In December 2025, our prestigious jury — featuring leading names including Bvlgari, Louis Vuitton, Kering Beauté, Chloé, and many more – came together to evaluate the entries for the Packaging Première Innovation Awards. The winners were then unveiled, celebrated, and honoured at the inaugural Innovation Awards Gala, held on the eve of Paris Packaging Week 2026.
On the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival, The Macallan has chosen to pay tribute to light, time, and tradition. This packaging, conceived for the brand’s addict, transcends the notion of a simple box to become a true work of art — a living lantern.
The starting point of this creation was to design a lantern-shaped box containing one exquisite gold-embossed leaflet, one miniature vial, two hand-carved stone ice cubes, and an assortment of mooncakes.
When lit, the lantern reveals all its mystery. Each face comes alive through a delicate interplay of shadow and light, crafted as intricate Chinese shadow play. The viewer is transported, through shifting lights, from Scotland to the lands of Asia, in a visual dialogue where past and present converse.
This play of light and shadow is narrative. Like the moon, whisky evolves, matures, and transforms through its cycles — and it is this poetry of time that the lantern so gracefully embodies.
How did the pack fulfil the brief?
This play of light and shadow is not merely decorative — it is narrative.
Each side is a page of a poetic tale, cut with extreme precision — five layers of paper superimposed, with twenty distinct cutouts per face.
This creates a fascinating visual depth, where light slips between the layers as time flows between ages.
At the heart of the box, the moon is not only depicted — it moves.
Thanks to a discreet mechanical system hidden within the lantern’s structure, the phases of the moon — even its eclipse — can be recreated by turning a knob engraved with Macallan’s lunar symbol.
The object thus becomes a poetic metaphor for time — a reminder of the patience and mastery behind the aging of Macallan whiskies.
Why do you believe this pack deserves to win an Innovation Award?
In this creation, light becomes matter, mechanics become poetry, and design becomes language.
Each face of the lantern, each cut, each glint of gold tells a part of the Macallan story — that of a house which does not merely craft exceptional whisky, but bottles time itself.
Who did you work with on this project?
- Products manager of Macallan
- Parcome Paris’s team
