Fiesta Bowl Stadium Box

Overview shot of stadium box showing field details.

Ryan Lowry (Art Director/Creative Manager, Fiesta Bowl)
Andrew Bagnato (Chief of Communications, Fiesta Bowl)
Design Packaging – Evelio Mattos & Rob Repta
Prisma
Chad Carmody (Account Executive, Prisma Corporation)
Phoenix Design Week
Ryan Nelson – Photography
Country: United States

College football will enter a new era under the name College Football Playoff beginning with the 2014-15 season. Arizona’s Fiesta Bowl along with other bowls are bidding to host the National Championship Game rather than automatically receiving it via a 3-year rotation. Striving to be the host for 2016 the Arizona Fiesta Bowl, along with various organization and officials, made a statewide effort entitled “Arizona 2016”.

The Fiesta Bowl’s approach to highlighting Arizona through an interactive packaging concept that focused on Arizona’s award winning University of Phoenix stadium, began with many improbable concepts. Struggling with the realities and limitations of packaging design and manufacturing, Fiesta Bowl’s Ryan Lowry consulted with personal friends Evelio Mattos and Robert Repta from Design Packaging.

Design Packaging’s creative team was extremely helpful and open in sharing ways that we would be able to manufacture this concept within the Fiesta Bowl’s tight deadline using the Fiesta Bowls suppliers. With the agreed upon direction Ryan approached Prisma Graphics, a trusted partner of the Fiesta Bowl, and developed a game plan for manufacturing the package design within their capabilities. Designer Chad Carmody provided tremendous advice on paper choices and a layout that provided the spirit of the stadium while being durable for mailing and being realistic to produce 50 final copies within a week.

The complete package design represents the stadium, the box’s interior recreates the football experience with angled stadium seating and a small-scale field in the center. Illustrated on the exterior are the 7 flags signifying the National Championship Games that the Fiesta Bowl has previously hosted. These banners serve as a testament to the organization’s experience and ability with a game of this caliber. The bottom of the box houses the bid book, which replicates the stadium’s retractable field wrapped in turf material complete with airbrushed field lines. An experience made possible by using the diecut thumb notches. The book’s design features various beauty shots of Arizona staggered among the stadium’s technical data and regional information. Spiral binding was chosen due to the turf cover and for it’s easy flip through ability.

In a way this keepsake box symbolizes how amazing Arizona is. Along with being a beautiful destination, there is a very welcoming, established and open design community here. The creatives that made this possible coupled with events like Phoenix Design Week continue to inspire true collaborative projects like this and showcase Arizona’s amazing community.