2 LABASAD Students Shortlisted for the 2025 Pentawards

We are proud to announce that two students from LABASAD’s Online Master’s in Strategic Packaging Design have been shortlisted for the 2025 Pentawards—the most prestigious international competition dedicated to packaging design. This recognition places their projects among the global design elite and confirms the high creative, conceptual, and technical standards achieved by our students during their time at the school.

The Pentawards celebrate proposals that elevate packaging to a strategic tool capable of generating value through aesthetics, innovation, functionality, and social and environmental impact. Being shortlisted means joining a creative elite that sets the course for contemporary design, and represents a professional milestone sought after by designers worldwide.

One of the nominated projects is Sol Skin, created by José Adrián Aceves. It is a hyper-personalised skincare set that offers unique formulations and label designs tailored to each individual. In a market flooded with generic products promising universal solutions, Sol Skin presents a revolutionary alternative: a skincare system as unique as each person’s skin. It all starts with a thorough evaluation that collects data on oil levels, sensitivity, hyperpigmentation, lifestyle, and environmental factors. This information generates an individual skin profile that feeds a computational model responsible for formulating bespoke products—cleanser, serum, and moisturiser—adapted to each skin’s evolution.

However, the personalisation goes beyond the formulation: the data is transformed into generative art, resulting in exclusive visual labels that reflect each user’s unique characteristics. This fusion of science and art turns each set into a one-of-a-kind emotional experience. Additionally, the subscription model, on-demand production, use of recyclable materials, and focus on refillable packaging reinforce its commitment to sustainability. Sol Skin represents a new approach to personal care: effective, conscious, emotional, and responsible.

The second shortlisted project is VULCAN, developed by Andrea Muñoz. This genderless cosmetics brand is inspired by the eruption of the Tajogaite volcano in La Palma on 19 September 2021. What was once a natural disaster is here transformed into a powerful metaphor of resilience and transformation. VULCAN was born to demonstrate that adversity can become opportunity, through a personal care proposal based on skin-beneficial ingredients that are environmentally respectful and deeply rooted in the land.

The visual identity and structural packaging design follow eco-design principles, with a geometry that emulates volcanic terrain to offer a unique sensory and visual experience. Furthermore, VULCAN promotes the local economy through collaboration with artisans and the use of locally sourced (KM0) ingredients. Beyond its cosmetic impact, this brand conveys a message of regeneration on environmental, social, and emotional levels. VULCAN is not just a brand—it is a statement of intent: a project that goes beyond aesthetics to become a tool for change. Its narrative revolves around the duality between destruction and creation, darkness and light, desolation and rebirth. VULCAN is conscious beauty—it is identity, it is territory, it is transformation embodied in design.

At LABASAD, we proudly celebrate these two nominations, which reaffirm our educational community’s commitment to strategic, innovative design with real-world impact. The international recognition that the Pentawards represent not only validates the work of José Adrián Aceves and Andrea Muñoz but also consolidates LABASAD’s position as a school capable of shaping designers who lead change in the packaging sector.

Would you like to be the next to leave your mark on the creative landscape?
Explore LABASAD’s online master’s programmes and become part of a creative community that makes a difference.