Avidity Creative – Cedar Crest
Stone cold renderings to showcase Avidity Creative's brand design for Cedar Crest ice cream
Avidity Creative hired pkgd.design to replace flat Photoshop mockups with photorealistic 3D renders of Cedar Crest’s refreshed ice-cream packaging.
The brief: custom “frosted” renders that look cold, craveable, and consistent across seven flavor SKUs — plus environmental scenes for web and social. Every asset had to be award-submission-ready and work double duty for Avidity’s portfolio and Cedar Crest’s marketing.
Problem
2D mockups couldn’t sell cold-surface realism, and they didn’t scale across SKUs and aspect ratios. Avidity needed a cohesive, photorealistic image library — paperboard tubs under studio lighting, tactile enough to anchor portfolio pages, award entries, and brand channels without a single re-shoot.
Outcome
Using SolidWorks for geometry fidelity and KeyShot for rendering, pkgd.design delivered a unified asset set: individual SKU renders with a believable frost treatment, plus environmental scene compositions in HD wide (desktop) and vertical (social) formats. The images replaced legacy mockups on Avidity’s site, supplied Cedar Crest with ready-to-publish visuals, and served as the image backbone for design-award submissions.
Ibrance – Pfizer Rx
Calendarized holistic packaging that guides breast-cancer patients through a complex dosing cycle
Ibrance® (palbociclib) is a potent CDK 4/6 inhibitor for HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. To work safely, patients must follow a strict 21-days-on / 7-days-off schedule at one of three strengths (75 mg, 100 mg, 125 mg). Early in-market bottles left many women second-guessing whether today was an on day—or if they’d already taken a tablet. Workshop interviews in Manhattan confirmed the core pain: “I dump the bottle and count backwards to be sure.”
Pfizer charged Sam with leading the structural redesign from bottle to a holistic, wallet-card-plus-carton system that makes dosing intuitive—even for patients fatigued by chemo.
Problem
Patients lacked confidence. A bottle offered no visual cue for where they were in the cycle, leading to mis-dosing risks. Any new pack also had to:
- meet F=1 child-resistance (FDA) without frustrating older or neuropathic users;
- keep all three strengths visually distinct;
- integrate clear graphics from Pfizer’s partner agency without altering structural integrity.
Outcome
Within 24 months we moved from workshop sketch to market launch (2020):
- Three wallet cards per carton, each holding seven tablets.
- A circular, start-any-day blister pattern — patients align Monday–Sunday clockwise, eliminating calendar math.
- Design-patented blister geometry — US D889,280 & US D889,282, issued July 2020.
- Passed F=1 on the first test submission for 100 mg & 125 mg; 75 mg required one tweak due to round-tablet shape.
- Pfizer’s HCP materials now highlight the pack as a built-in “dose-tracking” aid.
ZYNcoin Comfy Can
Turning a throw‑away plastic canister into a pocket‑proud premium accessory
ZYNcoin wanted to give holders something real. Its in-house brand Get Comfy asked for a premium aluminum snus can — same size and capacity as the familiar plastic ZYN tin, good enough to show off, discreet enough for any pocket. And one more thing: hide a working bottle opener in the base.
Get Comfy brought the sketch to pkgd.design. The mission: turn it into supplier-ready CAD in under a week — and prove a fractional industrial design partner can outpace a traditional studio without cutting corners.
Problem
ZYN’s stock tin is injection-moulded plastic — cheap, light, made to be thrown away. Replacing it with CNC-machined aluminum raised three interlocking problems:
- Geometry paradox — the client wanted the bottle opener dead-centre on the can’s underside. Standard pry-bar openers need an exposed edge; a sealed disc has none.
- Capacity constraint — the can had to hold exactly 15 pouches. Nobody trades convenience for style.
- Weight and cost — aluminum feels premium, but every gram and every machining minute shows up in pocket weight and unit cost.
Miss any one of these and the product is a novelty — not flagship merchandise for a crypto-savvy audience.
Outcome
In five business days pkgd.design delivered two fully manufacturable versions:
- Debossed lid – streamlined feel, lower tool wear, and the lower projected unit cost of the two options.
- Embossed lid – mirrors the client’s original concept, adding modest extra mass and machining time.
Both variants matched the original plastic tin’s outer dimensions within ±0.05 mm, retained full 15‑pouch capacity, and arrived with STEP files, cutter‑path notes, and ISO‑dimensioned drawings any CNC shop could run immediately.
Challenges
Photo-realistic “frost”
The brand wanted a convincing cold-surface look—tight micro-condensation, subtle edge melt, and depth variation—without the plastic sheen or stamped-on speckle you get from generic overlays. The treatment had to hold up in macro close-ups and wide hero frames alike.
Paperboard realism at the micro level
Ice-cream tubs have tricky material cues: hard-angled seams, rolled circular lips, tiny wrinkles on the lid’s inner roll, and crinkles along the outer top edge where dual die-cuts meet. The shader and bump/normal work needed to communicate real paperboard—not plastic.
Composition ideation before heavy lift
Before committing hours to modeling and rendering, we ran quick thumbnail-sketch sprints — stacks, arcs, radial spreads — and shared annotated selects with Avidity to lock brand vibe and storytelling early. That cut iterations once the 3D work ramped up.
Color fidelity under studio lighting
Each flavor owns a distinct colorway. The light rig had to keep whites clean, blacks rich, and flavor hues consistent from every angle — so a seven-SKU grid reads as one family, with no hue drift or clipped highlights.
Solution
Custom frost material
We built a dedicated cold-surface material tuned for packaging: fine-scale roughness for micro-condensation, localized breakup at edges, and depth cues that read as surface chill rather than painted noise. The shader resolves cleanly from macro crops to large banners.
Calibrated studio lighting
A neutral, controllable studio rig preserved brand colors while sculpting appetizing speculars. With exposure and white balance locked, flavor-to-flavor consistency stayed tight across the entire set.
Cohesive camera & composition system
A fixed camera “recipe” (focal length, height, tilt) created uniformity for single-SKU renders. For environmental scenes, we built two families—gravity-grounded stacks and floating arrays—so the brand can pivot between premium restraint and scroll-stopping energy.
Delivery for web, social, and awards
Beyond standard PNG/TIFF stills, we delivered layered PSD files with individual render passes (key/fill/rim lights, shadows, backgrounds, reflections). Avidity’s team can fine-tune composites in Photoshop, keeping the investment a living asset—a key advantage of 3D over one-and-done photo shoots.
Result
The image system replaced legacy mockups across Avidity Creative’s portfolio and gave Cedar Crest award-submission-ready visuals that translate cleanly from desktop hero banners to vertical social posts. Consistent lighting, believable paperboard, compositions built for every aspect ratio — and because it’s a layered, editable 3D library, the investment keeps working for future campaigns and flavors.
Impact
7 flavor SKUs rendered as a cohesive family
Custom frost treatment for believable cold-surface realism
Layered PSD handoff with render passes for award, web, and print workflows
Need renders that look colder than the real thing? Book a call — we’ll build your brand a reusable, award-ready image system.
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