Double Win at Pentawards 2025: Behind the Making of Sitch Written by: Ben Lyon

We’re back from Amsterdam, still buzzing after picking up Gold and Silver at the Pentawards for our work with Sitch.

It was a big night, trophies, cheers, and an unplanned dance-off that Mat somehow also won (scroll to end to see! ). The hangover was real, but mostly we’re proud.

Sitch had already won big at Dieline last year, and this double Pentawards result cements it as one of those rare projects that hits on every level: story, structure, sustainability, and shelf impact.

So instead of another trophy post, we wanted to share a few thoughts from the conversation we filmed out there about what actually went into it.

“The whole thing was totally bespoke.”

Mat: “For a start it was totally, totally bespoke. The whole thing was totally bespoke. So the full brand, packaging from the ground up. A whole new footprint. It meant that the whole brand was tailored, the whole experience was super tailored and super customised. We managed those touchpoints really closely. That’s part of it. The second thing is I think it looks great. It was bang on brief but it really stands out on the shelf.”

That’s been a through-line in our work this year, starting from zero rather than retrofitting old systems. It’s more effort, but it’s how you get brands that feel coherent and confident from the first moment someone picks them up.

Designing for a refill culture

Function met form in every decision. The packaging had to look premium but behave responsibly. That kind of detail is where a lot of unseen time goes, exploring what’s viable, testing, discarding, and starting again.

Mat: “The main thing in terms of the packaging was to make a vessel that would be beautiful enough to store and keep, with their refill system. It was a real sustainable project in the sense that it was achievable to do it that way. But working out which way that should go was probably the trickiest thing. Obviously material choices, we looked at wheat, straw, plastics, going through that journey of navigating through all the different materials was probably the biggest thing client side.”

The hidden work clients don’t always see

That invisible work, proportions, nesting, manufacturing logic, is what makes the final result feel effortless. It’s also why projects like this earn longevity long after launch.

Mat: “It took like over a year from concept to shelf. We could have just put something nice on the shelf, but there was a lot of thinking in the background about how the whole range was going to work. These packs all nest into each other, they’re exact proportions. So if X is one, some are 2X and some are 0.5X. They all have to sit inside each other, so any change on one pack changes all the others. There was a lot of detail, a lot of design thinking behind all that.”

On trends and timelessness

Mat: “We just don’t look at trends. Obviously we’re on socials so you get stuff by osmosis, but we’re certainly not actively hunting out trends or saying ‘this is what’s trending right now, let’s do this,’ because ultimately a trend will come and go. It’s about designing in a way that’s right for the brief and finding its own unique home, not a trend.”

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That philosophy runs deep at Lyon & Lyon. True originality comes from restraint and listening to what the brand needs, not what the algorithm wants.

Process and play

The best projects usually have that combination, serious thinking and people you actually want to work with. It’s hard to fake chemistry, and this one had it in spades.

Mat: “The brand process was really fun. The brand itself is quite fun, there’s a lot of light in it. It got real and hard when we were actually making these things production ready. That was super tricky. We had packaging engineers working with us to get it right. But Gloria and Anthony, the clients, were just great fun. Lovely people, we got on really well.”