RIT students' Pacha Cacao chocolate boxes bloom into Brazilian flowers (student concept)

The fictional brand Pacha Cacao highlights ethical issues in cacao farming — poverty and deforestation — donating 15% of each box's earnings to sustainable agriculture in Brazil and the Amazon Rainforest.

Five RIT students across packaging science, industrial design and graphic design researched Brazilian culture, then built the colorfully printed PR package and flower-shaped retail boxes under professors Lorrie Frear and Irma Abu-Jumah.

Named a finalist in the PPA's 2026 Student Design Challenge in July, alongside Cal Poly teams Dāt and Tempus; finalists presented to industry professionals at the Paperboard Packaging Council's annual meeting in Orlando.

Every spring, students in Professor Lorrie Frear's Packaging System Collaborative class at RIT work on the Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge. One 2026 team — packaging science student Emily Zhao, industrial design student Joanne Tong, and graphic design students Ava Moran, Natalie Randolph and Max Mazgelis — developed Pacha Cacao, a fictional luxury confectionary brand, and in July it was announced a finalist in the PPA's 2026 Student Design Challenge, alongside teams Dāt and Tempus from California Polytechnic State University.

The challenge asked students across the US and Canada to create retail and PR packages for a new luxury confectionary brand, emphasizing a memorable unboxing meant for an influencer to open on camera. The team focused its research on Brazilian culture: the outer PR package's colorful pattern was, in Natalie Randolph's words, "inspired by different foods, ingredients, and florals that are native to Brazil." It opens to reveal three pink, flower-shaped boxes for the retail shelf; the retail box is a pentagon with a floral top representing five-petal Brazilian flowers like the Brazilian Petunia.

The inner lid tells the brand's cause — fighting poverty and deforestation in cacao farming by donating 15% of each box's earnings to sustainable agriculture in Brazil and the Amazon. The finalists traveled to Orlando, Florida at the end of September to present the design to industry professionals at the Paperboard Packaging Council's annual meeting and learn their placement. RIT had competed in previous years and placed first in the prior year's competition.

The brief made the unboxing itself the product: packages would be opened by influencers on camera, so the reveal had to be a moment.

Research into Brazil gave every decision meaning, from the native-florals pattern to the pentagon's five-petal floral top.

The fictional brand's donation cause turned the inner lid into storytelling space, deepening the brand beyond the shelf.

A cross-disciplinary team — packaging science, industrial design, graphic design — covered structure, form and surface in one group.

Make the unboxing the marketing: a package designed to be opened on camera earns its own reach, and every design choice — color, shape, cause — can carry the story.

Finalists presented at the Paperboard Packaging Council's annual meeting in Orlando at the end of September 2026, where the competition's final placements were decided.