Branding

Brand colours are hugely important, it’s your way of owning a shelf and providing a quick and efficient visual shortcut for consumers to find your brand.

It’s also important that whatever brand colour is chosen is relevant for the brand and supports all the products in the range.

Here’s an interesting example from Chicago Town. Blue is often a good neutral colour. Many other colours work with it, especially when you’re looking at flavour communication but getting the right blue can make all the difference.

In this case the neon bright blue with the vignette into the darker colour tend to look very cold, the opposite of what a pizza should be .

When is paired with other cold colours as per the purple flavour banner here, it can start to cue more Halloween than sizzling pizza oven

Often, it’s not about throwing everything out. It’s just about picking a more appropriate hue.

Get that right, and it can have a significant increase in both sales and consumer perception of the brand.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Always make sure your architecture works with your pack.

If you have a wide and varied product range, it’s important to create a packaging architecture that allows for consistent and optimised placement of every element.

Your brand logo, product descriptor, key messaging and imagery should each have their own space and be allowed to breathe.

No element should be fighting with another. And the placement of one element shouldn’t compromise everything else around it.

This Birds Eye pack is a good example of exactly that issue.

The food photography feels cramped into the bottom of the pack, while a large amount of empty space sits around the logo at the top. The result is an architecture that feels uncomfortable and slightly forced.

The issue seems to come from the need for the brand icon to sit above the wave containing the product information. That wave also creates a very confined space were longer product descriptors need to opt for a much smaller font

While this might work in principle, across different pack formats and products it can create areas of dead space.

And that’s valuable space.

Space that could be used to better showcase the product, communicate its benefits and, ultimately, make the pack work harder on shelf.

A strong packaging architecture isn’t just about consistency. It’s about creating a flexible system that can adapt across your entire range without forcing individual packs into a layout that doesn’t suit them.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Silver can be a tricky colour to manage under supermarket lighting.

What looks fantastic for a product on a design visual may not work as efficiently in store.

It can often result in products completely blanking out and disappearing on shelf

This is accentuated if the metallic substrate is curved as it picks up every reflection and every detail from those products around it rather than showcasing its own

Any copy, iconography or communication on this substrate becomes almost impossible to read.

Adding a tint of white or matt varnishes to the substrate often helps to minimise this while still keeping a metallic finish.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Choosing the right packaging format is just as important as what you put on it.

This example from the bread aisle is a good reminder of that.

Once the wrapper is applied, everything starts to work against the design. The material creases and folds, and suddenly the brand logo, product information, and even the barcode begin to disappear into the distortion.

Flexible packaging like this introduces a few consistent challenges.

First, graphic distortion. What looks clean and considered in flat artwork can quickly become warped once wrapped around the product.

Second, predictability. It becomes difficult to control where key information will land. The back of pack in particular is hard to orientate, as folds and movement shift what is visible.

And then there are the crimp areas. These effectively dictate what can and cannot be seen, yet they are often the least stable parts of the pack.

When you step back, the usable, undistorted surface area is actually quite limited. There are only a few safe zones where communication will reliably hold.

That is what makes this type of packaging so challenging. It is not just about designing the graphics. It is about designing for the behaviour of the material

A good comparison is Cadbury Creme Egg.

It uses a similarly unpredictable format, but the design is built with that in mind. Bold graphics, flexible layouts, and branding that can withstand distortion without losing impact.

That is the opportunity here.

Not to avoid flexible formats altogether, but to work with them. To understand where distortion will happen, where visibility is strongest, and how to place the most important elements accordingly.

Because ultimately, great packaging is not just about how it looks flat on screen. It is about how it performs in the real world, creases and all.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Standing out on shelf is never the problem. Standing out in the right way is where it gets interesting.

This cooking oil pack is a great example of that balance in action.

It takes a very modern approach. Clean, minimal, and deliberately stripped of traditional category cues.

The vertical logo works hard. It catches the eye and creates a strong, contemporary presence.

But in doing so, it also starts to borrow heavily from visual language we typically see in personal care.

The format, the finish, even the overall feel. It leans closer to something you might find in a haircare aisle than in cooking oils.

That creates an interesting tension. On one hand, it drives standout. It looks different, which is valuable in a crowded category.

On the other, it moves away from some of the cues that signal taste, quality, and authenticity. The things people instinctively look for when choosing a cooking oil.

There is an opportunity here.

How do you keep that modernity and distinctiveness, while reintroducing just enough category cues to reassure and guide?

Because borrowing from other categories can be powerful, it can refresh and reframe. But without the right balance, it can also create a small moment of doubt.

And in food, that moment matters.

The most effective designs tend to stretch the rules, not ignore them entirely.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Standing out on shelf is never the problem. Standing out in the right way is where it gets interesting.

This cooking oil pack is a great example of that balance in action.

It takes a very modern approach. Clean, minimal, and deliberately stripped of traditional category cues.

The vertical logo works hard. It catches the eye and creates a strong, contemporary presence.

But in doing so, it also starts to borrow heavily from visual language we typically see in personal care.

The format, the finish, even the overall feel. It leans closer to something you might find in a haircare aisle than in cooking oils.

That creates an interesting tension. On one hand, it drives standout. It looks different, which is valuable in a crowded category.

On the other, it moves away from some of the cues that signal taste, quality, and authenticity. The things people instinctively look for when choosing a cooking oil.

There is an opportunity here.

How do you keep that modernity and distinctiveness, while reintroducing just enough category cues to reassure and guide?

Because borrowing from other categories can be powerful, it can refresh and reframe. But without the right balance, it can also create a small moment of doubt.

And in food, that moment matters.

The most effective designs tend to stretch the rules, not ignore them entirely.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

The success of the chicken wine has been a spring board for a menagerie of different animal inspired wines.

You can see why, focusing the label around an animal can be a perfect way to lift the pack out from a sea of sameness. That said, in order to maintain credibility in the zoo, it is important that this animal is linked to the product in some way.

This pack caught my eye yesterday. Now, whilst the label was enough to act as a beacon on shelf, it needed to work hard to balance this beacon with credibility.

The brand hinges around the tweaking of the famous ‘pig based’ nursery rhyme. It’s an opportunity to do something clever memorable and establish credibility.

Get this wrong, however, as here and it can undermine its whole proposition. Clumsy copywriting leads to confusion and a world of potential cheesiness.

The brand has attempted to talk about what the Wein can be paired with and it’s overall taste profile but the net result feels a little shoehorned in rather than cleverly woven

Standing at a distance is one thing, convincing the consumer close-up is another

#Marketing, #Design, #Branding, #Packaging

I often get into fairly interesting conversations on here with people about packaging formats.

I’m all for doing something different but it has to be functional and practical. Form should always follow function as I mentioned before.

Now before people jump in and say yes, but it’s very different so It will stand out. You have to remember some of the functions and fundamentals of Packaging design.

The Packaging needs to help with the overall delivery of the format and if this format challenges the norm then other aspects such as the graphic needs to help easily explain what the product is, and the chosen format needs to be up to the challenge of delivery of the product

That neatly brings me onto this example of a foaming body wash.

The product uses a structure more akin to squirty cream. Imagine how tricky, and slippy the pack is to use in the shower! Most shower creams and shower gels are designed specifically for one-handed operation. This requires not just the addition of another hand, but the addition of a soux chef to operate. 

So where the format fails the Graphics need to do a lot of of the heavy lifting. However, because they have taken a stripped back and on trend approach, they lack all of the personality and all of the traditional cues to help support what the product is.

Be different by all means, but don’t forget what the product is and how it’s used

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

I often get into fairly interesting conversations on here with people about packaging formats.

I’m all for doing something different but it has to be functional and practical. Form should always follow function as I mentioned before.

Now before people jump in and say yes, but it’s very different so It will stand out. You have to remember some of the functions and fundamentals of Packaging design.

The Packaging needs to help with the overall delivery of the format and if this format challenges the norm then other aspects such as the graphic needs to help easily explain what the product is, and the chosen format needs to be up to the challenge of delivery of the product

That neatly brings me onto this example of a foaming body wash.

The product uses a structure more akin to squirty cream. Imagine how tricky, and slippy the pack is to use in the shower! Most shower creams and shower gels are designed specifically for one-handed operation. This requires not just the addition of another hand, but the addition of a soux chef to operate. 

So where the format fails the Graphics need to do a lot of of the heavy lifting. However, because they have taken a stripped back and on trend approach, they lack all of the personality and all of the traditional cues to help support what the product is.

Be different by all means, but don’t forget what the product is and how it’s used

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Sometimes, all the information is there, it’s just not presented in an engaging way.

Branding is all about storytelling. It’s capturing the imagination of the consumer and communicating how you meet a specific need.

Remember, the consumer decides emotionally and justifies logically. They have to be attracted and invested in what you have to offer.

Take this example from the cooking oil aisle. Arguably all the information is there to sell the product to a consumer, however the story is missing.

It immediately feels very worthy, almost like popping into Holland and Barrat’s to buy some multivitamins rather than a staple for the food cupboard. That tends to communicate hard work and compromise rather than benefit.

A great way to think about this is how would somebody described this pack and brand to me if I wasn’t there?
How is this going to make me feel?
How does it benefit me?
Why should I use this instead of my normal brand?
What visual sign post and triggers would they describe?
What tone of voice is it using?

Apologies for all the questions but it’s important to understand this. If the pack leaves you asking more questions than it answers, the chances of you picking it up and putting it in your basket are very slim.

#Marketing, #Design, #Packaging, #BrandDesign