Packaging

Mezcal Buen Suceso’s Celebratory Brand Pattern

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 30, 2015June 22, 2015

Mezcal

Designed by Futura, a Mexican branding agency in Monterrey, the packaging for Mezcal Buen Suceso looks like a joyful shower of multi-colored confetti. A premium artisanal form of tequila, made from the heart of agave plants. Mezcal Buen Suceso is handcrafted in the Oaxacan village of San Juan del Rio. The vibrant hues of Oaxacan houses inspired the bright colors of Buen Suceso packaging. Rather than print the pattern on the exterior face of the mezcal bottle, Futura called out the pure crystalline quality of the drink by displaying the colorful geometric shapes through the clear liquid and transparent glass. The festive pattern is also presented on the inner lining of Buen Suceso boxes, company stationery, promotional materials, and a rain of tiny confetti dots on Buen Suceso’s website.
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Packaging

Tasteful Packaging Sells

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 24, 2015June 22, 2015

It might be considered tacky to give a bar of soap as a gift, but not if it is beautifully wrapped.

Established in New York more than 30 years ago, Michel Design Works found its niche merchandising tasteful gift products in lovely garden-themed designs and packaging. Scented bar and bubble bath soaps, body lotions, paper napkins, coasters and placemats, kitchen towels and potholders, and the like are delightfully decorated with antique botanical prints. In the case of the soap, the wrapping paper makes the product look like a luxury item, but is inexpensively priced to give as an appropriate hostess thank-you or as a shower party favor. The packaging for the soap even features the Michel Design Works’ elephant logo as a hot-wax seal. What makes this soap “gift-worthy” is not the actual bar of soap (however good it is); it’s the packaging. The packaging defines the brand.

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Marketing

Shocase Shows Off Marketing Talent

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 22, 2015April 24, 2015

Shocase is a new social network site with some of the intentions of LinkedIn, Pinterest and Facebook, but is targeted specifically to the 100+ million marketing professionals worldwide. It acts somewhat like the old Blackbook directories, but in a friendlier, more interactive and constantly updated way.

Shocase CEO Ron Young explains, “Members can present their work, skills and experience in the best light to the audience they value most; brands can find the right marketing professionals to suit their needs in any discipline. The site is designed to help build working relationships, and ultimately help members grow their business.”

Film

The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 15, 2015June 22, 2015

MrToledano
MrToledano2
How do you design a film poster that suggests how humans come to inhabit a different body over time? This is the subject of a new documentary called “The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano,” which premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. The film was produced by filmmaker Joshua Seftel who has produced and directed several award-winning documentaries for television, radio and theater release. “The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano” is about famed photographer Phillip Toledano’s effort to envision the ways his life would change over the next 40 years. The project is a continuation of an exploration of aging that Toledano presented in a photo journal on his father’s final years. Called “Days With My Father,” the journal visually tried to reconcile the active, handsome man his father once was with the decrepit old man plagued by severe memory loss. In this film Toledano “fast-forwarded” himself through theatrical makeup to picture how he would be at various stages of his life.

The discussion of an appropriate poster design for “The Many Sad Fates of Mr.Toledano” began between Seftel and Kit Hinrichs while they were on a long flight to Saudi Arabia. When Kit returned to the States, he developed several poster options, three of which are shown here. The top one was the final choice. The one at bottom left simply shows Toledano’s face. At bottom right, the collage of rectangular pieces shows abrupt facial changes, whereas the top image, with the thinly sliced horizontal strips, seem to vibrate Toledano’s facial features, suggesting a gradual, constant change.
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Illustration

Milton Glaser: A True Design Legend

By Delphine Hirasuna | April 9, 2015June 22, 2015

Designers, in my humble opinion, are a self-congratulatory lot. They constantly hold juried competitions and give themselves awards, produce publications to pat each other on the back, and freely call elder designers “icons” and “legends.” Copywriters, on the other hand, (of whom I count myself among them) never refer to anyone in the profession as a “copywriting legend” or “copywriting icon”. We don’t put out magazines reprinting the best corporate brochure text, direct marketing paragraph, or pithy headline. As a group, copywriters are usually unsung and ignored. That said, there is one designer who genuinely deserves to be called a “legend”: Milton Glaser. He is to be admired for his originality, talent, contributions to art and design, and because he comes across as a sweetie. That makes us happy to present this short video interview of Milton Glaser, put together by the New York Times.

by Corporate Design Foundation

Month: April 2015