Given the Bureau's initial official title – the Experimental Package Design Bureau – and its short-hand name, "Tara" (Container), it's evident that packaging design was meant to be one of the agency's principle missions. Indeed, the proposal to establish the Bureau called for the:

 

 

Bureau designers created original packaging designs from paper, glass, metal, and plastic for all kinds of different products: from food tins to souvenir items. Some design proposals never made it past the sample stage, as evidenced by a request inscribed in a comment book by a visitor to a graphic design show:

 

 

Designs for confectionary items, specifically candy and chocolate boxes, were among the products that received the most attention from clients and consumers alike. The names of some of the Bureau's artists-constructors who created these designs are worth mentioning here (even while many others were never made public). Confectionary product design specialists included Teresė Bajorūnaitė, Vaidilutė Grušeckaitė, Teresė Ivanauskaitė, Jadvyga Laurinavičiūtė, Astrida Žilinskaitė, and Monika Urmanavičiūtė. The confectionary packaging they designed revealed several trends in graphic design of the 1960s, of which the most prominent was the use of folklore motifs – a common feature found throughout all Lithuanian graphic design of this period. Folklore was embraced in graphic design examples both as a thematic subject and in a fluid language of design elements, ranging from the use of folk art illustrations to modern decoration.

 

If we look at the names given to confectionary goods in the 1960s, we notice a predominance of folklore narratives and references. Examples included "Vai kur buvai" ("Where were you", a line from a well-known folk song), "Vaiva" (a shortened version of the Lithuanian word for "rainbow", in a design by Elena Lisauskienė), "Suk suk ratelį" (borrowed from a popular folk song and dance for a product by Jadvyga Laurinavičiūtė), "Žvaigždutės“ (Little Stars, a design by Monika Urmanavičiūtė), and "Dūda" (a traditional Lithuanian folk horn, for a design by Laimutė Ramonienė).

 

Several designers created chocolate box concepts based on their own interpretations of the beloved Lithuanian fairy tale Eglė žalčių karalienė (Eglė, Queen of the Serpents), one of the most popular narratives to emerge in graphic design in Lithuania in the 1960s. Teresė Bajorūnaitė used this theme in several of her packaging designs, creating compositions of decorative ornaments and motifs engraved with folklore elements such as fir trees (from the equivalent Lithuanian word, and common woman's name, "Eglė"), the sun, stars, a serpent's crown. Another design project which showcased Bajorūnaitė's unique style was the "Kaukė" (Mask) chocolate candy box. The front of the square box included a sketch reminiscent of a Carnival or Shrove Tuesday mask, imitating the patterns and decorative etchings commonly found in Lithuanian folk clay works.

 

Jadvyga Laurinavičiūtė, meanwhile, adapted the characteristic style and ornamentation of traditional Lithuanian Easter egg designs and wooden chests for her designs of the "Paukščių pienas" (Birds' milk) chocolate candy line: a rectangular box with a white drop of milk incorporating the logo of the Karolis Požėla confectionary factory, designed by Svaškevičius.

 

Another Laurinavičiūtė design, packaging for "Bočių likeris", was considered a collector's item for its distinctive engraved printing and gold color accents. The front of the square packaging depicts a photographed image of a chocolate candy in the shape of a horn, alongside which the designer incorporated a playful placement of the factory logo and a product name in an angular typeface, meant to symbolize the fortitude of Lithuania's ancestors ("bočiai"), surrounded in stylized recreations of traditional folk spindle ornamentation.

 

Vaidilutė Grušeckaitė's confectionary packaging designs were also known for meticulous photographic detail and a minimalist approach. One of her first designs arranged a display of "Asorti" candies and a lower case "a". In her design for the Giliukas candy line produced at the Rūta confectionary factory, Grušeckaitė chose to use a placard style approach, incorporating traditional folk art cutting ornamentation and diagonally placed inscriptions.

 

The trend toward the use of moden decoration is well illustrated in the design of the Nida chocolate box by Bureau artist Teresė Ivanauskaitė, who chose a sun and star motif and echoing geometric circles that, as they join together and overlap each other, create a feeling of optical art vibrations and graphic rhythm, accentuated by the golden color used. The rectangular cover of the candy box retained an asymmetric composition emphasized by the caligraphic lettering in the name "Nida" that almost looks like the designer's signature. Ivanauskaitė understandably often called this package design her "calling card."

 

The examples of Lithuanian packaging designs described above illustrate how artists used unique and creative interpretations of folklore themes in their search for new forms of expression. The trend toward modern decorativity in examples of 1960s graphic design reveals itself through a laconic and emotional use of fluid forms that are the product of vivid and contemporary interpretations rather than a simple and direct understanding of folk art.

In the 1960s and 1970s, advertising brochures, packaging, posters, and even the smallest labels designed in Lithuania incorporated new, modern Lithuanian trademarks. Trademarks were one of the graphic design fields in which Experimental Package Design Bureau designers took particular pride, earning them broad recognition and awards.

 

The first issue of the trade magazine Tara. Reklama in 1966 showcased the Bureau's first trademark designs and their creators:

 

 

While this citation may read like text from a Western graphic design textbook or magazine, within the context of the socialist system it had a bit of a utopian ring. Such aspirations were more reflections of declared government promises than actual attitudes or capabilities of manufacturers.

 

It should be mentioned that artists welcomed trademark commissions, viewing them as an inspirational creative process that allowed them to demonstrate their professionalism and personal style. More than two hundred new trademarks were created in the first six years of the Bureau's existence, from 1964 to 1970. Each new trademark was registered with the Soviet Council of Ministers' Committee for Inventions and Discoveries. The certification process sometimes took several years, since registration was reserved solely for original trademark drafts. Thus, designers had to seek out new, unique, and untried solutions, despite the fact that many similar enterprises and product brands existed throughout the Soviet Union.

 

Bureau designers to this day recall certain laughable requirements. In one example, a commission to create a trademark for a brewery was accompanied by an instruction forbidding the use of images of beer foam, beer mugs, or hops, since they were already present in the branding materials of other enterprises.

 

Designers favored laconic and pure forms in the creation of new trademarks that would ensure effective advertising and brand recognition. The simpler the forms and the fewer extraneous details and information in a given trademark, the easier it was to recognize, reproduce, and use to create an overall brand style.

 

Personal libraries and archives testify to the fact that Lithuanian trademark designers had a thorough knowledge of Western literature and trademark history and oriented their work toward new trends. For example, the personal archives of Teresė Ivanauskaitė include a 1968 issue of the Bureau's trade magazine, Tara. Reklama, which featured the world's most famous graphic design works shown in New York in 1967 at an exhibition of leading trademarks hosted by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The magazine reprinted 160 works from the exhibition, with accompanying text that emphasized their artistic value: artists sought to create original but also functional and, most importantly, timeless trademarks.

 

In the 1960s and 1970s, designers were not only busy creating new, modern trademarks for newly established factories and enterprises, they were also tasked with "updating" existing marks designed in the inter-war period and in the 1940s and 1950s. Redesigns of trademarks from nationalized pre-war Lithuanian corporations often retained the style of the original brands, as was the case with the textile company "Kauno audiniai", which featured the enterprise's name in calligraphic text (by Kęstutis Ramonas) while preserving the mark's most recognizable details and adding new, stylized and contemporary forms. In another example, revisions to the trademark for the "Cotton" hosiery factory, designed by Laimutė Ramonienė,  reflected the company's speciality and added to its minimalist corporate style revealed in op art packaging and bag designs (designed by Monika Urmanavičiūtė and Raisa Šmuriginaitė)

 

In terms of their visual and semantic expressiveness, level of abstraction and suggestiveness, the trademarks created by the Bureau perfectly blended into the overall global context, even though they often represented small and peripheral Soviet enterprises. The Lithuanian character of these designs was most evident in trademarks centered around text and typeface featuring readily recognizable Lithuanian words, letters, unexpected formations, and expressive combinations.

 

Only a few trademarks created in the 1960s have "survived" to this day, due to changes in fashion, corporate names, ownership, and the products manufactured. Some examples of "timeless" Lithuanian graphic designs include: the "Vilniaus duona" (Vilnius Bread) logo, created by Teresė Bajorūnaitė in 1967, Romualdas Švaškevičius' trademarks for Anykščiai Wines, logos designed by Kęstutis Gvalda for the Kapsukas milk cannery, now incorporated into the logo of the Marijampolė cannery, and Raisa Šmuriginaitė's trademark for the Panevėžys dairy factory, still featured today on "Pieno žvaigždės" waffle ice cream cups.