Tag: food packaging design

Rejuvenate your Packaging Design in 2022

Posted on by Ellen Turbett

A new year brings endless opportunities. It is a time for change, a time for evolution, a time for doing better. This should be no different in your business. As your organisation enters 2022, take time to consider the areas that could do with a revival and refresh.

An asset in organisations that often gets overlooked is packaging design. Yes, it is essentially the final step in the buying and selling process for your company but is a massively important asset to your brand identity.

Whether it is packaging that will appear pride of place in your retail store, packaging that will be photographed and promoted through your online store or packaging that will be used for online orders and delivered to your valued customers door, it is important to stand out, remain consistent and boost your brand identity.

They say “don’t judge a book by its cover” but believe it or not, we all do it, especially as a consumer. Often, a packaging design alone is enough to draw your attention to a product, be it online or in-store. Incidentally, the design of your packaging has the power to make or break a customer’s buying decision.

Make a Stand-Out First Impression with your Packaging Design

First impressions are key. This is no different in the buying process. We often find ourselves gravitating towards products that hold exciting designs, be it online or instore, the likelihood is, if the design stands out, you will investigate.

On the other hand, we often find ourselves overlooking products that have poorly designed packaging. This often links to our belief on first impressions – ‘if the packaging isn’t exciting, the product inside probably isn’t either’.

This is an area wherein many organisations face issues. You can invest a fortune in your product, website, brand identity, but if your packaging fails to showcase how brilliant your product is, it is likely to fail.

Let your Packaging Design Tell your Story

When developing a packaging design, it is important to consider a brand-new customer, one who has never heard of your products or services. Taking this approach will ensure your packaging tells a story about your brand, guaranteeing that customers will understand what you are aiming to achieve.

Packaging must be educational and informative in order to work. Although it is desired that customers recognise your brand identity, this is not always the case and you must be prepared for this eventuality.

The 5 W’s

Who, When, What, Where and Why?

When creating a design for your products, it is advisory to incorporate the trusty 5 W’s. Who are your target audience? When are your target audience going to realise what the product is based on the packaging? What is the product inside the packaging and does the design represent this? Where are your target audience going to come into contact with your packaging? Why have you chosen to design your packaging in a particular way?

Consider the Logistics

Although the design is our primary focus with your packaging, it is paramount to ensure that it is a manageable design, boasting the correct elements to guarantee functionality. Your packaging must be a protective shield for the product inside, as well as providing the necessary information for a customer to know what the product is. Additionally, your packaging design must be eye-catching on the shelf or the web page, this is so important, ensuring it draws the customers attention to your product, over a competitor’s product.

Packaging Design with Kaizen

At Kaizen, we recognise the importance of packaging design. We hold esteemed relationships with packaging printers across the UK and Ireland to guarantee our packaging can be proficiently developed to ensure success for your product.

Kaizen can create packaging design for a wide variety of products, including food packaging sleeves, gift bags, gift boxes, labelling and essentially all types of outer packaging.

With esteemed clients such as Bushmills Whiskey, Slims Healthy Kitchen and Thompsons Rum, Kaizen have an outstanding team of experts, who have advanced packaging design for many products, ensuring they appear pride of place in-store and online.

The Cookie Jar

Posted on by YBmMqGwLx0

The Cookie Jar is a well-established bakery situated in the beautiful surroundings of the Mourne Mountains. Since 1965 The Cookie Jar have been baking some of the country’s best known breads and sweet treats, from Wheaten bread to Soda bread, Fruit Bannock and beyond they have built on their Grandmothers fame across Northern Ireland and kept true to her original recipes. To this day owner James has kept every recipe his grandmother created the same, as they were in the 60’s – a testament to the quality of the products. From their premises in Newcastle, County Down The Cookie Jar noticed that there was high demand for their traditional Irish baking outside of the bakery shop and across the world. Ex-pats living in Australia, America and Europe seek the traditional baked taste of home and The Cookie Jar was happy to help. The power to re-create your favourite Wheaten, Soda, Scones and much more from your home, no matter where you are in the globe spawned the idea of ‘Bake your own’ – The Cookie Jar’s solution, in the form of ingredient packages. The ingredients simply need water and oil added in order to re-create the beautiful taste of home, still with James’ Grandmothers original recipe. With increased interest and success of selling and shipping the ‘Bake your own’ model required a brand identity as well as some packaging design.

In creating the brand identity we needed a narrative for the brand that immediately told the brand story before a logo or package is seen. How do we sum up a traditional bakery that is famous for their product in Newcastle, Co. Down – Mourne and Bread. Mourne and Bread is the lead narrative that sets the foundation for the brand identity and tone of voice. Mourne and Bread addresses the surroundings in which the bread is created and recognises the tradition and nod to being ‘born and bred’ in the Mournes.

Now that we have the narrative the identity would soon follow. We created a brand mark that remembers the old identity through a revised wheat icon as well as bringing the texture of the work surfaces in the bakery to the type design. The textured type instantly tells the tale of the bakery and once paired with the new, improved colour palette the entire mark communicates as a fresh, contemporary identity. We created both stacked and horizontal logotypes for versatility across the branding both in print, signage and online.

Marketing and promotion for The Cookie Jar allowed us to build upon the narrative, copy and art direction – from ‘Mourne and Bread’ to ‘up here it’s bread into us’ and gorgeous, epic shots of the Mournes and dramatic bread shots the branding, when pieced together is very powerful.

Following the design and marriage of all branding elements we were able to focus on how the ‘Bake your own’ packaging would appear. Taking into account the direction of marketing material and storytelling across the brand we wanted this to continue. Utilising the ‘Bake your own’ theme we designed the packaging to reflect the homemade feel and resonate with the ‘crafty’ audience who would be baking the breads and mixes. We introduced scenic Mourne illustrations and photography to the package design as well as a contemporary ‘way-finding’ icon set to be used as the product list develops.

We not only got to develop a fantastic brand identity and strategy but we also had the pleasure of creating some of the delicious breads and scones in the studio. The ingredient bags make it so easy and believe me the results are delicious – personally I had the Wheaten Bread and Scones and both are incredible, highly recommend you try out The Cookie Jar.