Scd designed this dynamic packaging for Fitgraan, a new brand of cereal and cereal bars.
“Fitgraan is a new brand of cereals. They wanted to have a brand and packaging that reflected a healthy and good quality of products.”
Designed By: scd
Creative Director: Natalia Delgadillo, Ana Mesa
Brand Lead & Design: Camila Morales
Photographer: Ana María Mesa
Artwork: Jonathan Cediel
Location: Bogotá, Colombia
By: Casha Doemland
Chances are when you think of Florida, you think of four things, hurricanes, gators, suffocating humidity and Disney World because Floridians need the “The Happiest Place On Earth” to balance everything out.
Despite that, the sunshine state has some redeeming qualities like producing the most oranges for national consumption, as well as a handful of businesses on the up and up. One of which is Made Coffee, a St. Petersburg Coffee Cannery, whose motto is “How do you withstand your typical Florida summer? Cold coffee.”
Made Coffee started from humble beginnings in early 2015 when founder, Michael Rideout, started shelling out Cold Brew and Nitro Brew from the back of a coffee bike to local eateries and establishments. As the desire to expand arose, the question of how swirled around in his mind. Why become another local coffee house, when you can become “The Cannery,” the nickname for the production facility they acquired in 2016.
Just like that, Florida’s Original Canned Cold Brew was born, and the handful of accounts ballooned to well over 900 with help from Reggie, their Diedrich Roaster that roasts all of the fine coffee beans at their facility.
They also brought in Break Maiden for some assistance on their branding and packaging design.
“Marc Berenguer (Creative Director) and I developed the Made brand a few years back when we were working together at a local agency here in St. Petersburg,” says Kenny Coil, Break Maiden’s other Creative Director at Break Maiden. “The branding and packaging project made a huge splash locally, regionally as well as various social channels. Through the success of Made’s brand launch, I developed a great relationship with Mike and the Made team.”
After Coil relocated to Austin, Texas, he kept in contact with Mike, and when the idea came around to pay homage to everyone’s home state, everyone was on board to create a Made For Florida brew. After all, craft breweries do it all of the time, why couldn’t a craft coffee do the same?
“Our cold brew is refreshing in the Florida heat and perfect to bring along on outdoor adventures,” says Taylor Prater, co-founder, and marketing maven at Made Coffee. "We wanted this new packaging to utilize the symbols of Florida – palm trees and sun depictions – with a bit of edginess to stay true to the brand.“
Before introducing the idea to Break Maiden, Made Coffee developed a concept through a series of mood boards, that way they had a solid jumping off point for collaboration.
“The design obviously had to be Florida inspired one way or another, but I knew it didn’t want it to be vintage or distressed,” says Coil. “It felt too easy and maybe a little overdone in the beverage industry. I started my research on South Florida and quickly became obsessed with Miami South Beach architecture. The Colony Hotel, Jerry’s Deli and The McAlpin served as great sources of inspiration to start building out the wireframe.”
Skipping traditional pencil and paper, Coil went straight to the computer to craft his designs. “It’s so much easier to work with straight lines and within a packaging dieline,” Coil chimes in.
Throughout this process, Berenguer acted as his cross country guide as he was still in Austin and together they explored numerous layouts and color palettes that all fell within Made’s brand guidelines. For example, Made’s original Cold Brew & Nitro Brew cans feature the triangular dip at the top—the Made logo and established date were nonnegotiable. With that in mind, Break Maiden incorporated that basic design into the linework of the limited edition Made For Florida can.
“Once the front and back frames were designed to mimic the architecture of South Beach Miami, it was a matter of figuring out what visuals would sit inside of them,“ shares Coil. "We settled on the three most representative of Florida: palm trees, sunshine and the gulf.” While the idea of highlighting the weather in various colors crossed their mind, at the end of the day, the team decided it would only complicate the design.
“Phase two was the waiting game,” starts Coil. “They wanted to make sure they got the time just right. It didn’t make sense to launch a Florida inspired can in the middle of winter, even if the temperature wasn’t changing.”
The empties ended up sitting pretty in the Cannery awaiting release for a summer launch, which went off without a hitch.
Looking back, Coil learned the process of using shrink wrap in combination with a complex mono-line design on aluminum can cause a little distortion, and as “shops printing in small quantities are solely focused with getting the job done and out the door, we did our best to quality control to ensure a bangin’ final product,” adds Coil.
At the moment, the Made Coffee is only available to Floridians and those passing through to Disney World or Miami, but expansion isn’t out of the question. The right product line and moment haven’t presented themselves for national distribution, so it’s best to stay on your toes to see when Made Coffee’s Cold Brew or Nitro Brew will be paying homage to a state near you.
LA-based and Georgia-bred, Casha Doemland spends her days crafting poetry and freelance writing. Over the last two years, she’s been published in a variety of publications and zines around the world. When she’s not nerding out with words, you can catch her watching a classic film, trekking around the globe or hanging out with a four-pound Pomeranian.
Design Bridge Shanghai has created a bold new graphic identity and packaging for Starbucks Mooncakes to build emotional connections with younger consumers across China. The new packaging uses a striking colour palette to disrupt traditional design codes while remaining culturally relevant, achieving crucial standout in the market during the Mid-Autumn festival, one of the most important Chinese festivals of the year.
Tom Gilbert, Creative Director of Design Bridge Shanghai, commented, “The Mid-Autumn festival is an annual harvest celebration centred around the moon and people coming together. Sharing mooncakes with your family and loved ones is an integral part of the festival, so it’s really important that your brand’s mooncakes stand out. Our challenge was to bring something new and exciting to the market that disrupted tradition whilst remaining culturally relevant and true to the Starbucks brand.”
Design Bridge’s familiarity with local traditions and intuitive understanding of the Starbucks brand allowed them to take risks that others may not have dared to. For example, they chose a strikingly contemporary colour palette of lime green, rich orange and purple that challenges traditional design cues yet appeals to younger audiences seeking something new.
This has been balanced with a sensitivity to the cultural traditions of the festival. For example, the Chinese saying of “人月两团圆”, which translates to “The moon and the people are one”, inspired the creative idea throughout the project; bringing the moon, people and Starbucks together in one design. The packaging features circular ‘wood-cut’ designs, inspired by intricate hand-carved wooden mooncake moulds, which tessellate to make new circular patterns when boxes are displayed side-by-side. Meanwhile a menu card inside each box displays the two halves together as one. These details symbolise the idea of people gathering together with their loved ones during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Tom Gilbert, Creative Director of Design Bridge, commented “Creating a design that combines cultural sensitivity and bold design choices has enabled us to create a genuinely distinctive offer for Starbucks in China. Our design adds something truly unique to the tradition of sharing mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn festival and enables Starbucks to build deeper emotional connections with a younger group of consumers.”
Starbucks Mooncakes is the first project to launch from Design Bridge’s Shanghai Studio, which opened earlier this year. The mooncakes are in store now, ready for the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 24th.
Designed By: Design Bridge Shanghai
Location: Shanghai, China
Chon Choner is a well-known coffee line from Mr. Viet that features playful illustrations.
“Kopi Luwak (better known as Chon in Vietnam) is a type of coffee famous for a specific way of its processing. It is deemed to be one of the most expensive varieties of coffee in the world.”
“The goal: Pass the feeling of exotics, emphasize the animal image. Develop a premium and at the same time welcoming image. Explain to the customer that it is exotic coffee from Vietnam.
Solution: We have decided to tell about the product through a picture. Exotic environment and the animal image are self-explanatory.”
Project Owner: Anastasiya Guseva
Art Direction, Design, Photography: Yura Podryadov
Illustration: Anna Abwehr
Location: Vietnam
Fabula Branding designed this modern packaging for DOG&MAN pet food.
“The modern pet food market features a lot of strong brands. The customer’s task was to launch a new trademark named DOG&MAN and focused on functional dry dog foods to make it distinguishable.”
“The majority of competitors emphasize classic dog images in their design concepts. This is why we focused on the relations between the dog and its master. The name itself gave the brand more of a male nature, and we continued to elaborate it.
The design idea divides the package into two parts. The upper one features the photo of a young man with a dog. The image shows their honest partnership based on equality and mutual respect. Different types of foods (for bigger and smaller dogs) are illustrated by different breeds.”
“The lower part is filled with easily understandable infographics as well as one of the constants in our concept – attractive food styling which is unusual for this category.
To emphasize the male nature of the brand, we used black and white colours, laconic block lettering, and infographics.”
Designed By: Fabula Branding
Location: Belarus, Minsk
Free-From bakery category leader Genius Gluten Free has unveiled two wraps as part of a new ‘Good for the Gut’ range of six products due to roll out this year, with design from London-based B&B studio. The first products to launch are the Genius Fibre Fest Beetroot Wraps and Genius Fibre Fest Kale Wraps.
In line with the Genius core range, ‘Good for the Gut’ products are entirely gluten and dairy free but with the addition of a natural prebiotic to appeal to the gut-conscious consumer. Each product in the range also has a stand out nutritional benefit: wraps that are 3 x fibre of regular wraps; pasta that’s 2 x protein and 3 x fibre of regular pasta; bread crisps with 2 x protein and ½ the carbs of regular crisp breads.
Tasteful design
Moving away from the scientific-led design codes often adopted by brands in the Free-From and benefit-led category, B&B studio has introduced a bold, eye-catching colour palette for the new ‘Good for the Gut’ range, delivering a dynamic identity incorporating bespoke graphics and illustrations.
Focusing on depth of taste and flavour, B&B studio has created a range of original patterns in-house that take inspiration from the product ingredients, including layers of beetroot and swirls of kale leaves. These designs are presented on brightly-coloured backgrounds, providing differentiation for the new range and standout on-shelf.
Strengthening the brand
Building on the new brand identity for Genius Gluten Free delivered by B&B studio in October 2017, this vibrant brand extension incorporates the strong blue hue and instantly recognisable Genius logo, complete with a thought bubble or bitemark to express the imagination, creativity and tastiness of the Genius brand.
By incorporating these familiar brand elements into the identity for the ‘Good for the Gut’ range, B&B studio was able to retain the consistency of the brand whilst enabling more creative freedom across the wider design. Innovative structural packaging solutions ensure that the new products are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also convenient for the consumer.
Building on success
Shaun Bowen, Creative Partner at B&B studio, says: “After the success of the new brand identity for Genius Gluten Free last year, we wanted to retain the consistency and recognisability of the brand whilst also creating vivid and engaging designs for the new range, strengthening Genius’ position as a market-leader, and enabling it to continue to challenge mainstream brands.”
Genius Fibre Fest Beetroot Wraps and Genius Fibre Fest Kale Wraps provide three times the amount of fibre, and one third less carbohydrates than a regular gluten-containing wrap, and include chicory root inulin, a naturally-occurring Prebiotic Fibre that contributes to normal gut function.
The Genius Good for the Gut range is available from Tesco in August, and Sainsbury’s and Ocado from September 2018.
Designed By: B&B studio
Location: London, UK
By: Fred Hart
What happens when you check out some 800 breweries with over 3,800 beers in one day? Well, we found out the hard way when we attended The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) this past weekend in Denver, Colorado, on the hunt for the best “undiscovered” beer branding and packaging.
As we walked (and later stumbled) through the show, we saw plenty of Dieline familiars – from national craft players like Ballast Point and Dogfish Head – to young guns like Magnolia, Noble Rey and Bayou Teche. However, we were after the up-and-comers, the companies flying just under the national radar that deserve a little more of the spotlight.
They say the more you drink, the better-looking things get. No doubt the same holds true for packaging, but even while sober, these six brands shined the brightest.
Fred Hart
Fred Hart is a Partner and Creative Director at Interact Boulder – a spirited branding agency obsessed with the food and beverage industry that’s fueled by a steady, 24-hour diet of tastemakers, entrepreneurs, grocery stores, farmers markets, restaurants and more.
