Award winning
packaging design
Winner · Luxury Packaging of the Year Beautyworld Dubai Awards 2026
GHAFF: Award Winning
Luxury Perfume Packaging Design.
Emirati identity. International luxury ambition.
GHAFF’s Luxury Fragrance Collection won Luxury Packaging of the Year at the Beautyworld Dubai Awards 2026. This case study explores GHAFF’s perfume packaging design, shaped through cultural understanding, market awareness and creative direction by Kevin Tatios through Brande, together with GHAFF’s founders and the project team.
The concept film connects Emirati architectural references with the bottle, cap, and fragrance collection.
AGENCY
PROJECT ROCKSTARS
Jenson Peter
CLIENT
GHAFF
INDUSTRY
Luxury Fragrance
LOCATION
Dubai, UAE
Perfume packaging design with Emirati roots and international ambition
GHAFF set out to create a luxury fragrance house with a clear sense of origin and the ambition to stand alongside established international perfumes. The perfume packaging design needed to make that positioning visible through the bottle, the cap, the presentation box and the way the collection appeared as a whole.
The challenge was to balance cultural familiarity with wider desirability. For an audience connected to the UAE, the design could carry a sense of recognition and belonging. For someone discovering GHAFF elsewhere, the same object needed to communicate refinement, distinction and a reason to look closer.
My role as Brand Advisor and Creative Director
As a Dubai-based Brand Advisor and award-winning Creative Director, I guided the creative direction through Brande, in collaboration with GHAFF’s founders and our agency team. My contribution centred on connecting the cultural idea with the intended market position and keeping the bottle, packaging and visual expression aligned.
This was a shared effort. Jenson Peter brought dedication and creative contribution to the work, alongside the wider Brande team. The founders’ involvement gave the project a strong connection to the brand’s purpose. Their commitment helped carry the idea through the decisions and refinements needed to turn a creative direction into a coherent collection.
THE CULTURAL FOUNDATION
Carry the identity of the UAE.
Belong in the world of luxury perfumery.
GHAFF takes its name and inspiration from the Ghaf tree, a symbol of resilience and identity in the UAE. That foundation gave the brand a story with meaning beyond the fragrance itself. The creative task was to translate the story into a product people could see, hold and recognise.
Emirati architecture offered a relevant design vocabulary: the proportions of wind towers, the rhythm of openings, patterned surfaces, and the relationship between light and shade. The early concept work explored these references through bottle shapes, cap details and geometric treatments. The intention was to carry something of their character into a contemporary object.
Dubai’s architectural heritage provides part of the context through which that visual language can be understood. The brand’s foundation remains Emirati, connecting the product to a wider national identity. Cultural knowledge guided which references could retain meaning as they became form, proportion and detail.
That distinction mattered to the luxury positioning. The product needed its own presence and a coherent story, with enough clarity for the design to remain compelling even before its cultural references were explained.
The cap’s geometry becomes a distinctive focal point within the packaging identity.
LUXURY PERFUME PACKAGING DESIGN
Luxury Is Felt
Before the First Spray.
The packaging was designed to establish the product’s character before anyone experienced the fragrance. Proportion, colour, contrast and presentation needed to work together, giving the collection a considered presence within the luxury perfume market.
Murban · A distinct fragrance within a shared bottle identity.
PERFUME AND BEAUTY PRODUCT
PACKAGING AND MARKET EXPECTATIONS
GHAFF needed to speak to people who recognised its cultural references and people encountering them for the first time. The design direction therefore considered both familiarity and discovery: a connection to place for one audience, and a distinctive luxury object with a story to explore for another.
International relevance depended on the complete presentation. The bottle’s structured body, sculptural cap and restrained typography needed to feel related. The fragrance name required clarity, while the shared design language had to make GHAFF recognisable as a house across different perfumes.
The ambition was to give the collection a credible place among international luxury fragrances while keeping its Emirati character visible. That balance informed how strongly each cultural reference appeared and how the details worked together.
The opening sequence reveals the presentation box, interior and bottle.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF QUALITY AND RECOGNITION
In beauty product packaging design, visual signals shape the first impression. For GHAFF, the intention was to communicate care, authenticity and desirability through the product itself. The distinctive cap offers a point of recognition; controlled contrast makes its geometry legible; colour gives each fragrance its own character.
The box extends that impression into an unfolding experience. Its exterior introduces the brand, while the interior frames the bottle and repeats elements of the visual language. The opening becomes a sequence of related details, giving the product a consistent character from first encounter to reveal.
The strategic objective was clear: create a product that invited attention, supported a premium perception and gave people distinctive details to remember. Consistency across the bottle, box and imagery was intended to carry that impression into each encounter with the brand.
THE WORK PROCESS
From Cultural References
to Perfume Packaging Design.
The early Brande presentation documents the development of GHAFF’s perfume packaging design. It brought together references from Emirati architecture, house windows, carved doors, geometric tile patterns and the landscape. Traditional wind tower proportions were among the starting points explored for the bottle form.
Those references became a series of design possibilities. The team explored bottle and label layouts, cap treatments, colour relationships and the balance between the bottle body and its upper elements. Looking at these parts together helped establish how the product could express a single idea.
Colour exploration considered the individual character of the fragrances. Early proposals included translucent gradients, with the aim of allowing variation inside a recognisable collection. The final imagery shows that relationship through different glass colours and a shared bottle and cap identity.
The development also extended into the presentation box, brand pattern and interior. The design evolved beyond the initial proposals, so the early presentation records the thinking and exploration, while the finished films and product imagery show the realised expression.
My role was to keep the creative decisions connected to the brand ambition as the work developed. The founders’ cultural perspective, the agency’s creative input and the team’s attention to detail all contributed to that process. The result depended on the coherence of those decisions across the complete experience.
A DISTINCTIVE
BRAND ASSET
A Cultural Idea.
A Recognisable Silhouette.
The cap and bottle create a form that can carry the identity beyond the label. In the dark imagery, light reveals only selected edges and geometric details, drawing attention to the features that make the product distinctive.
This visual direction explores how the packaging can become part of the brand’s communication. Close detail, controlled shadow and partial reveals give the object a presence across imagery while keeping the same design character in view.
BRAND IDENTITY AND PACKAGING DESIGN
One Identity.
Across Every Encounter.
FROM THE BOTTLE TO THE BOX
The bottle’s structured form provides a foundation for the cap’s rounded, segmented geometry. The relationship between those elements creates contrast without losing balance. Dark and ivory details, warm accents and the individual glass colours give the collection a consistent visual character.
The packaging continues that language through pattern, layout and the bottle’s position inside the box. In the opening film, the silhouette and interior presentation connect the outer packaging to the object revealed within. Each stage belongs to the same design story.
FROM AN INDIVIDUAL PERFUME TO A COLLECTION
Each fragrance needed room for its own identity while remaining recognisable as GHAFF. Changes in colour and naming provide distinction, while the shared bottle, cap and typography hold the range together.
The wider brand presentation shows how these elements relate across the collection and its communication. This gives the product design a broader role: it provides recurring forms and details that can support a consistent impression wherever the brand is encountered.
AWARD WINNING PERFUME PACKAGING
Luxury Packaging
of the Year.
GHAFF’s Luxury Fragrance Collection won Luxury Packaging of the Year at the Beautyworld Dubai Awards 2026. The recognition belongs to the collection’s packaging and marks a shared achievement for GHAFF, its founders, Brande and the people who contributed to the project.
The completed perfume packaging design brings together a culturally grounded concept, a distinctive bottle and cap, and a coordinated presentation across the fragrance collection. The award provides independent recognition of the packaging. The case study explains the decisions and collaboration behind that result.
For me, sharing that recognition with the people behind GHAFF made the achievement particularly meaningful. The founders’ trust and dedication, the effort of the Brande team, and Jenson Peter’s creative contribution all deserve their place in the story. A clear direction becomes stronger when the people involved remain committed to bringing it to life.
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