There’s nothing superfluous in the branding and packaging of Good Food, the frozen food line made in Monterrey, Mexico. Designed by Face in Mexico, the graphics are minimal and clean. Sans-serif logotype. Silhouettes to show whether it contains beef, chicken or pork. A few descriptive words – “tasty,” “spicy,” “quick.” Simple and bold, the packaging graphics don’t over-promise, but just give shoppers the impression that what they’ll get is good, honest, undisguised flavors.
Middagsfrid — a service that delivers wholesome fresh foods, menu plans and recipes to subscriber homes in Stockholm — has launched a line of its own branded products. Stockholm-based agency, Bold, designed the packaging in collaboration with illustrator Peter Herrman. To create a sense of an ideal world filled with preservative-free, farm-to-table ingredients, Herrman sketched a fanciful landscape with a giant cheese grater and mixing bowl tucked among the houses, along with grazing cows and other livestock, horse-drawn cart, fruit-bearing trees and flowers. The idyllic scene is printed on newsprint-like stock to mirror the humble way locally grown goods are wrapped and affixed with a simple red label. The look suggests quality and craftsmanship.
When El Paso Chile Co. commissioned Charles S. Anderson Design in Minneapolis to create a new packaging system for its retail salsa and marinade lines, it wanted to make sure that consumers grasped the fact that its products were authentic Tex-Mex, not wannabe imitations made in places like Cincinnati or Brooklyn. A border town in far west Texas, El Paso is so close to Juarez in Mexico that the two cities are sometimes considered one metro area. El Paso Chile Co. knows its salsas and wanted the packaging to capture that in look and feel.
Morrisons, one of the largest supermarket chains in the UK, recently unveiled its rebranded entry-level “value” line, now bearing the name “M Savers.” The work was done by brand design agency Coley Porter Bell as part of a strategic assessment aimed at transforming Morrisons’ own label into a more coherent brand. With some 17,000 products and their variants in Morrisons’ own brand, positioning different tiers and categories of products was a daunting task.
Morrisons’ entry-level value line presented its own unique challenges. Stephen Bell, creative director at Coley Porter Bell, said that the term “value” had a negative meaning to some consumers. “Value ranges tend to be somewhat utilitarian, using template designs and basic corporate colors. Research shows that consumers are often ashamed to be seen with them. But with the economy stalled for the foreseeable future, value ranges will be competing on more than just price. We wondered why shouldn’t entry-level products have some charm and engagement?”
When French skin care company, L’Occitane, came out with a new limited edition shea butter hand cream, it departed from its usual simple packaging design and chose a colorful traditional African textile pattern, called mudcloth, instead.
Aside from the fact that the design is eye-catching and that tribal prints are in fashion, mudcloth, also known as Bogolan, seemed like an unusual choice for a company associated with the fragrances of Provence.