Roberts Radio

Roberts is a British radio brand steeped in heritage, and its products are made to be touched: bevelled edges, woven fabric, chrome and gold trim. In March 2020 Roberts asked us to pitch for the packaging of a new portable Bluetooth speaker, developed under the name Azul and launched as the Roberts Beacon.

The brief pulled in several directions at once. A portable speaker needs protecting, because its bevelled edges and milled fabric are easy to scuff. The pack had to feel premium enough to support a higher price point, yet be as sustainable as possible, built from recyclable materials with nothing in excess. And the unboxing had to be worth sharing: a reveal that takes its time, materials that beg to be touched, a nod to Roberts’ heritage and room for each buyer’s own sense of style.

We started wide. Our design team worked through the brief in rapid ideation sessions, splitting ideas into an eco direction and a premium one that still had to be sustainable, and came back with eight concepts. They ranged from a collectable heritage tin and a travel case in moulded pulp and mushroom leather to a brown paper pack with a slide-out cradle and the word Azul drawn as a laser-etched sound wave, and a minimal box whose four walls drop away to reveal the speaker.

Roberts shortlisted four of the eight to take forward. We developed the strongest ideas in 3D, testing kraft, white and coloured stocks and different ways to open the pack, before one structure was taken forward to final design.

The final design takes its cue from the speaker itself. Layers of corrugated card recreate the classic Roberts grille, so the pack carries the texture of the product inside it. The speaker sits in a corrugated tray under a kraft card insert, with a second recess alongside it for the charger, and a coloured sleeve slides over the top. Sharp edges and carefully engineered friction slow the sleeve as it comes off, so the reveal takes a moment, in the spirit of the best tech unboxings.

We then carried the design through to artwork: the sleeves, the inner caps, stickers for every model and eight embossed and printed options for the box caps, all set up on cutter guides for each part of the pack.

The Beacon comes in a range of colours, and the brief asked for packaging that felt personal to each buyer, so the pack changes with the speaker inside it. We produced sleeve artwork for 11 versions of the Beacon 310, 320 and 330 in ten colours, from Sunburst Yellow, Teal Blue and Midnight Blue to Dusky Pink, Berry Red, Duck Egg and Pastel Cream, each with a white line drawing of the speaker and the Roberts script on the front.

Each version also has its own label artwork carrying the model, colour and barcode, so one structure can be printed and packed across the whole range.

The Beacon range shipped in the corrugated pack, and buyers noticed the box as much as the speaker. Reviews singled out the packaging: one reviewer described it as “the piece of art on its own”, another wrote “Even the packaging is such good quality and so well designed I can’t bring myself to recycle it”, and a third praised the “quality cardboard and no plastic in sight”. The packaging design also earned a Red Dot Award.

For a brand that sells on design, the pack became part of the product: the first thing a Beacon owner touches, and a reason to keep the box.