The Catalyst Collection In The Industry Press
As part of a long-term collaboration between BRAND AVIATORS® and O-I Glass, one of the world’s leading glass packaging manufacturers, we explored a fundamental question: can packaging do more than contain and identify a product—can it physically embody what a brand stands for and how it should make people feel?
The work began by going beneath the functional properties of glass to understand its deeper emotional meaning and how shape, proportion, weight, texture, transparency and tactile experience influence what consumers perceive and feel.
But understanding emotion was only the starting point. Using THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES®, deeper human motivations could be connected first to brand strategy and positioning—defining the emotional territory a brand could authentically own—and then translated into the physical and sensory principles capable of expressing that territory through glass.
This created a direct bridge between two worlds that are often separated: the intangible world of brand meaning and the tangible world of packaging design. Positioning could inform shape; emotional meaning could influence proportion and texture; brand DNA could become something consumers could literally hold in their hands.
This thinking moved from methodology into real-world packaging through O-I’s Catalyst Collection: a series of glass designs created using science-backed principles of human emotion and behaviour to connect with consumers beyond conscious product attributes.
As GlassOnline reported, the collection demonstrated how emotional territories could be translated into glass shape and sensory experience, helping brands stand out, create emotional connection and build loyalty.
For BRAND AVIATORS®, the Catalyst Collection represented an important evolution: emotion was moving from something to decode and understand, to a strategic territory a brand could own, and ultimately to something that could be systematically designed into the package itself.
The collection made the progression tangible:
Human motive → brand meaning → positioning → physical design.
Emotion could be designed into the bottle itself.