A pinch of innovation, please!

Sometimes, a great packaging idea starts with one pinch too many. Alanur Türkoğlu knows the problem: when seasoning food, it is all too easy to add more than intended. This inspired the 22-year-old industrial design student from Istanbul to develop GRAIN, a packaging concept that keeps spices organised, allows for controlled dosing and can be refilled. The idea also impressed the jury at the Pro Carton Young Designers Award 2026.

Thank you so much. It was a truly exciting experience and something I’m very proud of. GRAIN is the result of a long process of design, prototyping and development. For this reason, it means a lot to me that my project was selected among so many successful and inspiring projects and recognized with an award. Especially as a student, seeing an idea I developed receive recognition on an international platform has been incredibly motivating me as well.

Yes. GRAIN actually emerged from looking at small, everyday problems in the kitchen that may seem insignificant but occur repeatedly. One of these was the fact that spice packages come in different sizes and visual styles, which can create clutter when they are stored together and make it difficult to quickly identify the spice you’re looking for.

However, one of the main moments of inspiration came during the development process, when I remembered how many times I had accidentally poured too much spice into my food because it came out in uncontrolled way. That was how the idea of incorporating a dosing system emerged.

At the same time, I also considered the fact that most packaging loses its function once the product inside is finished and is simply replaced with a new one. This is how organization, controlled dispensing and refillability eventually came together within the same system.

The starting point was mainly the use experience. I began by thinking abput how spices are stored in the kitchen, how easly they can be identified and how the amount being used can be controlled. However, as the design developed, what happens to the packaging after the product is finished naturally became an important part of the project as well.

When I developed the dosing mechanism, the inner container needed to rotate. Since it could not be fixed in place, it became a removable, independent component. This then made me realize that making it refillable could also help reduce packaging waste.

So, rather than being two separate goals, ease of use and sustainability gradually became interconnected parts of the same system, supporting one another.

I can definitely say yes to this. There were actually two moments. To be honest, I always had some doubts during my own testing. The first “aha” moment came toward the end of the project, when I was getting feedback from professor. That day, I had brought real spices with me, filled the package, and handed it to her to try. When she started rotating the inner container and the spice actually came out as intended, I remember getting really excited and thinking, “I think this actually works.”

The second moment was when the product was completely finished and I was taking photos to show the different stages of use. A close friend of mine was helping me by taking photos while I was holding and using GRAIN. When the spice started dispensing in a controlled way, we both looked at each other and said, “This really works.”

This was probably the most challenging part of the project. Normally, when designing a moving mechanism, it would have been much easier to use plastic, a metal connector, or another material. With GRAIN, however, the mechanism had to work entirely through the structure of the cartonboard itself.

At first, the dosing mechanism seemed much more achievable when I imagined the package in a cylindrical form. However, when I realized that I couldn’t achieve a proper cylindrical shape by folding cartonboard, I decided to use a hexagonal form instead. This meant that I also had to think carefully about how the cartonboard would fold, how the different parts would fit together, and how much resistance they should have while rotating.

In the beginning, the package had a much shorter and wider form compared to the final design. I produced several physical prototypes, repeatedly changing the dielines and connection details along the way. So, the final mechanism was really the result of an iterative process of designing, making, testing, and refining. It was challenging, but I genuinely enjoyed the process.

A spice package doesn’t simply hold the spice inside. It also influences how we store it, how easily we find it on the shelf, how much we use, and what happens to the packaging once the product is finished. We often stop questioning many of the objects we use every day because we become accustomed to the way they already work. But from a design perspective, I think something we might call “just packaging” actually holds a great deal of design potential. That is exactly why I would say it is worth designing and rethinking.

After receiving the award, rather than seeing GRAIN as a finished project, I see it as a system that can continue to be developed. Looking ahead, I’m very excited about the possibility of GRAIN becoming more than just a competition project and eventually turning into a real product that can reach actual users.

At the same time, I hope this award will open new doors for me and give me the opportunity to work on more challenges in packaging and product design in the future.