JKR

If you have ever tried to choose a new pair of earphones without too much knowledge of what’s good and what isn’t, you probably glazed over as quickly as I did. In the end one picks out a product within budget in the same random way that wine is chosen – not the cheapest, not the most expensive and, oh, they look the part, they’ll do.

The “EarBudeez” shown here won a Pentaward for packaging this year, and rightly so. Cringe-worthy name aside, not only are they eye catching (they do, after all, literally make eye contact), but they also exploit an obvious but underused truth of the category: earphones are a lifestyle product rather than a technical one, but the convention is for serious and techy looking design. Breathing a bit of fun into the category makes a generic product really engaging. “Reason to believe” focussed communication has its place, but this design shows that it can be just as valid to lighten up and not explain too much.