I have to confess to being [...]]]>  

Differentiating yourself from your competitors is always a challenge and none more so than within the Cider category.

I have to confess to being rather underwhelmed by the re-design of the Somersby brand (new design  top, old design below) which is a company established in 1749 and a personal favorite of mine, especially the Elderflower.

Somersby in my opinion had a great opportunity to pull itself away from the larger mass market brands, an opportunity to build on it’s heritage, and develop a brand that reflected it’s brand personality, which is  fun and a little bit of a British eccentric

(take a look at the adverts on www.somersbycider.com)

The introduction of the ladder to the logo does adds a little bit of personality but 50% of the label is doing very little to communicate the brand values, with the stamp and leaves if anything serving as detractors.

I know a Brand Manager can be reticent in moving the brand look and feel too far, for risk of alienating existing consumers, but we should not lose sight of why we evolve a brand 1) To re-engage lapsed consumers 2) To re-position a brand that has lost it’s way 3) To attract new consumers 4) To energise a category and  grow market share

I see little that will do any of the above. Perhaps thet should have looked at Cawston Press for a bit of inspiration!

Guess the brands to win a love-ly prize!

While you are enjoying your Easter eggs have a go at this months mash up!
Workout the three brands [...]]]>

Guess the brands to win a love-ly prize!

While you are enjoying your Easter eggs have a go at this months mash up!
Workout the three brands that make up this Storm logo?
E-mail your answers to mashup@stormbranddesign.co.uk.
Correct answers will be entered into a draw and the winner will get a love-ly prize!
Good Luck!

Last months brands were Hovis, Innocent and Nescafe. Big congratulations to John Ward, at Wilkinson. A £20 itunes voucher is on its way to you.

Creating layers of translucent duct tape, Zorn produces stunning portraits [...]]]> Dutch Street artist Max Zorn has revolutionised the use of duct tape, he uses it to create some amazing portraits.

Creating layers of translucent duct tape, Zorn produces stunning portraits of pop cult figures like the Beatles as well as classic artworks such as Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”

Zorn’s work has appeared on buildings, windows and even street lamps all over Europe.

It does not seem so long ago that concerns for the environment seemed a small issue, that went by un-noticed by the majority. Well that certainly is not the [...]]]>

It does not seem so long ago that concerns for the environment seemed a small issue, that went by un-noticed by the majority. Well that certainly is not the case now, indeed people would think you were daft if you said that global warming did not exist, as the scientific evidence is now overwhelming.
It is clear that we all need to play a part however small in reducing our carbon footprint and Retailer’s and Manufacturer’s both have a key part to play.

How something is packaged can have a significant impact, but environmental considerations are too often not considered to be important, this clearly needs to change.

Below are just a few ideas on what we can do to make to make our own packaging greener.

 
Size matters

Can the product be concentrated to reduce the pack size without affecting performance? (In the 90’s P&G’s Lenor concentrated reduced it’s packaging by 70% by doing so).
Does the pack size selected give optimum palletisation? Changing a product size marginally could save you up to 20% on your distribution cost this therefore needs to be considered at design.

Material selection

Where possible use recycled material or if this is not an option use recyclable, renewable or biodegradable materials such as PET, Polypropylene, Wood, steel, aluminum, glass and PLA avoid toxic or harmful materials like PVC, polystyrene, lead and BPA.

Reduce Weight

Challenge your suppliers to optimize the weight of their packaging, it does not always follow that a heavier weight material is any stronger. Often packaging is purely a barrier and a lighter weight material will save money and energy whilst still being fit for purpose. A good example is when UK retailer Thorntons managed to reduce the weight and volume of cardboard packaging by reducing pack sizes and removing un-necessary fitments. The reduction equated to 22%, which meant 700 tones less waste being sent to landfill.

Reduce Material Variety

Where possible keeping to one material especially for bottles and closures will increase recyclability and can decrease manufacturing energy.

Do not over-package

Over-packaging a product is not only a waste of energy and money it is also now at the forefront of a consumers mind, and may well result in a negative perception of your brand. It is often very straight forward, to remove unnecessary packaging, as your consumers are only too aware.

Simplify Design

Simple, elegant designed packaging without complex fasteners and components etc will reduce weight, simplify assembly and thereby reduce energy during manufacture.
Make packaging that people want to keep or that can be re-used a good example would be refill pouches for laundry detergent or a tin that is suitable for storage.

Design Packaging alongside Products

Too often packaging is an afterthought if packaging is considered at the same time you significantly improve your chances of creating an environmentally affective piece of packaging. Why not involve your creative agency in the product development process where all aspects can be discussed and considered, after all packaging is integral to a products success
Food packaging is particularly challenging because of the specific requirements of the product such as the need for a gas barrier, to be greaseproof and then, of course to protect and promote the product, this unfortunately leads to excess layering.
Most packs will have been designed with little or no understanding of sustainability and could have impossible to recycle foils, metallic or matt laminates or be metalised. Many such packs suffer from the inevitable layers of packaging as some designers feel that consumers like to undress their gorgeous products. Therefore, many materials and decoration methods are actually some of the worst for the environment.
It is clear that designing effective packaging with the environment in mind is no longer something that perhaps needs to thought about it is something that MUST be thought about. The consumer are becoming far more savvy and with the growth of twitter, blogs and other social networking sites beware any manufactures or retailers that choose to ignore the ever expanding greener consumer.

So, its 9 o’clock on a Tuesday morning at work, nothing out of the ordinary and i’m busying myself, dabbling in a little internet research before tackling [...]]]>

So, its 9 o’clock on a Tuesday morning at work, nothing out of the ordinary and i’m busying myself, dabbling in a little internet research before tackling the real riggors of the day involved with being a designer here at Storm. You know how it goes; one moment you’re genuinely looking into project related articles and imagery and then quite some time later you find yourself coming out of an internet induced trance confronted, on screen, by google images displaying a plethora of amusingly shaped root veg!… I don’t know how it happens, it just does. Well, it does to me!? Anyway, without any further digression, that is approximately how I came across this particular headline:

Italian artist Piero Manzoni craps in a can. 

Ninety cans to be precise! Now, as somebody who has immersed themselves in packaging for the last decade (and despite having seen a lot of crap over this time) I have never seen ‘shit’ packaged and preserved in a tin can before. Manzoni did this all the way back in 1961 with the intention that each signed and numbered can of crap be sold for its weight in gold (around $1.12 a gram at the time). As get-rich-schemes go, Manzoni’s was a trifle ambitious but the artist ended up getting the last laugh: a tin auctioned by Sotheby’s on May 23rd, 2007 sold for €124,000 and in October of 2008, the respected auction house offered tin #83 with an estimated selling price of £50-70,000… Although Piero, we could have hooked you up with some far better branding old bean.

It’s a roll over!

We had a lot of entries for the February Brand Mash-Up but nobody managed to guess all three!

As the mornings are getting lighter [...]]]>

It’s a roll over!

We had a lot of entries for the February Brand Mash-Up but nobody managed to guess all three!

As the mornings are getting lighter and the clocks go back we thought we’d have a breakfast theme this month, we also thought we’d make it a bit easier as clearly last months was too much of a challenge! Again there are three brands in this Storm logo, can you work out what they are? E-mail your answers to mashup@stormbranddesign.co.uk. Correct answers will be entered into a draw and the winner will get a prize! Good Luck!

Last months brands were Love Hearts, Anne Summers and Durex.