The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2023–2024
Dan Huang gives quail eggs a cute bird face shoppers can read across the shelf
Jiangxi Yanjinpuzi's quail-egg snack gets a cute, instantly readable quail image on pack, teaching an unfamiliar category from shelf distance.
Jiangxi Yanjinpuzi Food Co., Ltd. · Shenzhen Tigerpan Design Co., Ltd.
What it had to solve
Jiangxi Yanjinpuzi Food launched Dan Huang as a universal healthy snack in China's crowded snack aisle. Quail eggs were a brand-new mini-category, and quail had no established image in shoppers' minds — so the pack itself had to teach the category.
How it works
Jiangxi Yanjinpuzi Food launched Dan Huang as a universal healthy snack, but its category — quail eggs — was brand new to China's crowded snack aisle. Quail simply did not form a familiar picture in shoppers' minds, so the packaging had to carry the education itself.
Shenzhen Tigerpan's answer was to summarise the quail's appearance into a cute, rounded visual character. The design turned an animal consumers barely recognised into a warm, memorable face on pack, giving the new product something to be remembered by.
The intent was explicitly commercial: recognition at a distance across the shelf, followed by efficient brand communication once the shopper came closer. A friendly image also shortened the interactive distance between brand and consumer, turning an unknown protein snack into something approachable enough to try.
Why it lands
- An unfamiliar category needs a visual shorthand, and a character is the fastest way to make a strange bird feel known.
- Designing for shelf distance means the pack sells before anyone reads a word, which matters in a crowded snack aisle.
- Cute imagery lowers the barrier to a new food, making an unknown product feel safe and approachable.
- One memorable face on pack can do the work of endless claims: it is the brand, the category and the reason to stop all at once.
What it did
The packaging gave the brand an instantly recognisable shelf identity and drew industry recognition: the work appears in the D&AD archive under Packaging Design and in the One Show 2024 packaging winners' archive.
What you can take
When you launch a category people have never thought about, let the pack do the teaching: a character readable from a distance beats any claim printed in small type.
Since then
Dan Huang's quail-egg packs became the new brand's shelf identity, and the design travelled through the international award circuit, appearing in the D&AD archive under Packaging Design and in the One Show 2024 packaging winners' archive. For Tigerpan it stood as an example of using character design to introduce an entirely new food category.
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