Backbone Branding's unHide packs discovery into a magnifier — Pentawards 2024 Platinum

Backbone Branding wanted a professional-concept project free from client constraints, exploring the beauty of nature that daily life overlooks. The idea began with a magnifying glass on a table and grew into a metaphor for looking beyond surfaces.

Make the packaging demonstrate the product: the ladybug on the lid reappears enlarged through the lens when opened, so unboxing is the first act of discovery.

Agency member Liana Mazmanyan authored and realized unHide as a magnifying glass product concept. Minimal packaging places one tiny natural object — a ladybug, feather or butterfly — on a pure-color field; lifting the lid reveals it sharp and star-like through the lens, with white and black box versions evoking day and night observation.

Won Pentawards 2024 Professional Concepts Platinum, the award for speculative and future-facing packaging; the concept reframed packaging as the proof of the product rather than its wrapper.

unHide is a concept project by Armenian packaging agency Backbone Branding: a magnifying glass product whose packaging is itself an act of discovery. The project began, in the agency's telling, with a magnifying glass left on a table; from that small object the team built a meditation on the beauty of nature that daily life overlooks.

The design uses dramatic minimalism. On each box a single tiny subject — a ladybug, a feather, a butterfly — rests on a pure-color field, almost hidden. Lifting the lid lets the user examine the object through the magnifying lens, where the ladybug's shell pattern turns sharp and star-like; a white box with a green-leaf background evokes daytime quiet, while a black one suggests night observation. Sans-serif type and corner-set information keep the eye on the subject.

Agency member Liana Mazmanyan authored and realized the concept. Backbone Branding presented unHide as a functional yet artistic project that moves beyond the boundaries of client work, treating packaging as part of the product experience — the wrapper is what teaches you what the lens does.

unHide won the 2024 Pentawards Professional Concepts Platinum, awarded to forward-looking speculative packaging. In its interview with Pentawards, Backbone described the project as proof that design can shift perception: opening the box is the first observation the product invites.

The packaging demonstrates the product: the ladybug on the lid reappears enlarged through the lens when opened, so the box is the proof of what the magnifier does.

It turns a mundane object into a philosophical stance — looking beyond surfaces — giving the project meaning beyond decoration.

The minimal contrast of one tiny subject on a pure-color field forces attention to detail, exactly what the product is for.

As a professional concept, it explores what packaging can be without client constraints, pushing the category from containment toward experience.

The best packaging can be a demonstration: if the box shows the product doing its job before it is even used, the consumer already understands why it exists.

Backbone Branding, founded in 2009 in Yerevan, built unHide on its philosophy of 'imagination for transformation.' At the 2024 Pentawards the agency won multiple awards — Platinum for unHide plus Gold and Silver for its premium brandy packaging ONCE and TUFF — cementing its place among the world's leading packaging studios. The agency said international awards prove a concept's potential in global markets, and unHide became a calling card for its speculative, concept-driven work.