Cologne

In the previous post "Branding Bath" I talked about redesigning the bath and body packaging for Agraria. Included in that adventure was a redesign of the cologne spray bottle. Shown here is my concept for the new bottle that features the spherical "bottle stopper" cap and octagonal crystal body. An etched gold metallic neck band cinches this slimmer more elegant sister to the bath bottle.

Branding Bath

Back in 2009, I had redesigned and overhauled Agraria San Francisco's bath line. They had various products in this category but each item seemed like an "add-on" with the logo slapped on as the cohesive branding. I'm the first to support proper exploitation of a brands logo, however the idea of "branding" is so much more. It's a point of view, an approach, a delicate infusion of shape, color, proportion to form identity.

The existing bottle (shown here, inset) was/is a nice squared shape. This bottle is the same bottle that Apothia uses in their bath line (shown). Apothia's bottle looks much better because there branding works well with the shape. The better quality cap helps a lot too. For Agraria, it's "ok" but not a perfect fit with its more classical personality. For a company with a traditional luxury position this was not good enough.

In redesigning Agraria's overall branding, I had focused on the concept of 8 core fragrances. This idea took the form of an octagon repeated in various forms... as a label shape or an element in a pattern. For the bath line, the octagon manifested as a tall bottle shape, short bottle and hand soap bar with slightly different yet cohesive forms.

An Eye on the Forest

I occasionally sit-down and create a "Portfolio Cheat-Sheet" as shown above. A single page of various cropped thumbnails of my design/illustration/product work that will usually accompany a resumé or go to a client for a quick visual reference.

I've never really been a designer that focused on one style or genre (perhaps supporting my abject obscurity), but find inspiration in variance. If you poke around this blog a bit, you'll see I have worked in a variety of industries that are seemingly quite disparate.

Because of the variety of projects, I find it a good exercise to thumbnail the work to gauge where I am leaning stylistically at a given moment. Work that has just been completed, mixed with the past helps me to see the "common threads" as well as where I may want to go next.

Cropping the images, aside from just arousing inquiry, helps to keep anyone from focusing too much on what the object is verses "reading" the visual "feel". In other words... something like not focusing on the trees, but to see the forest more clearly.

-rm

12 of Hearts

Since Valentines Day is approaching, I figured I share something "hearty". Shown here is an e-gift card I designed for an Agraria Valentine's promotion using the patterns I created for their fragrance packaging during my time there as their Executive Creative Director.

-rm

X-MAS

This Christmas card was the last thing I did for Agraria. It features a variety of ingredients in the many potpourris that Agraria makes ...in, as you can see, the form of a Christmas tree. I am personally partial to the shiminin shticks.

-rm

Little Luxuries

I worked with GuestSupply to build a Hotel Amenities program for Agraria. I designed a new bottle to have some visual connection to Agraria's number one selling item AirEssence, and all other packaging items followed in the style of the core product line.

The hotel line will usually be some kind of mini replica of the retail line or at least allude to it through various branding elements. Agraria's existing bath line at the time (as far as the bottle design was concerned) was something that needed attention...or shall I say it wasn't the best match for the brand. The amenities program opened the door for me initiate a change to the retail bottles as well. So, in Agraria's case, the retail bottle design would mimic the amenities design.

Due to the success of the amenities line and the brand exposure it provided, I created a much bigger bath and body line for retail including new bottle designs for bath, cologne, and liquid soaps that unfortunately I can not show here for the reason that they have not made them yet. Hopefully they do, some day. Anyway...

The Agraria amenities program was launched with the Lemon Verbena fragrance at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. For that launch, I also provided original designs for the vase, soap dish, and tray accessories for the rooms (shown). This was followed by the Palazzo in Las Vegas and an exclusive collection of the Golden Pomegranate fragrance for the Montage in Beverly Hills.

-rm

PS. I hope you appreciate that fabulous piece of onyx that I lugged around town for that shot. I ended up making a charming little table for the office. The guy who sold it to me did say I could bring it back but it was too pretty (heavy) to drag back to the valley.

photography: Elio Tolot

Luxury Bath Bars

Agraria has eight core fragrances. All products in the line are divided into two sub-collections. The Nob Hill Collection with four fragrances and Santa Barbara Collection with four. This originally made for a nice, neat merchandising set up when the collections were launched.

The challenge was that Agraria would develop individual skus in various fragrances (based on demand). This combined with a sales strategy of only selling full collections, resulted in a very uneven retail presentation. The two collections strategy didn't accommodate dropping fragrances that didn't perform, promote those that did, or build an awareness for any individual fragrance.

I planned to change this strategy by building an identity for each fragrance. It could exist in the current brand structure but eventually would shift the entire product line to accommodate a clear interest in shopping by fragrance.

It started with the Bath Bar. I designed eight unique prints for the eight fragrances. I used each print as a paper wrap for the bar and sealed them with a gold logo buckle and green ribbon band...as you can probably see for yourself.

-rm

Re-Tale

Nowhere is a product brand message more important than at retail. This image was part of a presentation that I created to defined the brand direction. This included mission statements, strategies, plans of action, brand element evolutions, and new product concepts.

My sketch here was not only to define details of a build-out but to assist in visualizing how new products and some key branding changes were all connected. The owners were also keen on securing boutique space at a number of key accounts like Harrod's, Saks Fifth Ave, and Neiman Marcus and this assisted in communicating the ultimate goal.

-rm

And Ads

I took a slightly different approach to the advertising for Agraria. The campaign was more product specific than before, monochromatic to re-enforce the fragrance identity and added impact, and slightly alluded to the original Nob Hill branding by creating the asymmetrical banding. The upholstered environments are designed to re-enforce Agraria's "home" fragrance position and sense of tradition and refinement.

-rm

photography: Elio Tolot

Catalog

As described on the previous post (Weaving The Web) the re-branding of Agraria also included the catalogs, their primary wholesale sales tool. The 2008 catalog, shown, was reformatted and cleaned up with refined typography, product specific spreads, visual tie-in to the web, a quick reference page of all product categories for sales reps and a more conceptual cover.

The cover, as any cover should, tells you about what is new and what the focus of the season will be all in a way that defines the brand point of view. The season that this catalog represented saw the launch of the Villa boxes (see post Come On-A My House) filled with Agraria's signature Bitter Orange Potpourri. The theme being orange, the end papers were an orange damask print that I designed for Bitter Orange packaging (more to come on that subject). This further enhanced my strategy to begin focusing on fragrance specific branding within the line.

-rm

Weaving The Web

Shortly after arriving at Agraria, I went about the task of overhauling all collateral. At the time, they had an ad created by one designer, a very amateurish catalog was done by another, and the web site (which looked like an Amazon-style commerce site) by yet another. Quality judgements aside, there was no consistency of brand message.

The process started with the web site. The web site was the primary brand communication tool that was direct to consumers. I started with a creative direction/style guide based on the key branding elements that existed, elements that needed to be "played-up", and new elements to better enhance the brands position.

One primary element was consistency of photography across all branded materials. The styling, lighting, angles all needed to be better defined. I created the inspiration board shown above and then did a series of tests with photographer Elio Tolot. We concluded with the long landscape, still life format shown in the web pages below.

With a "luxury" positioning, it was important to take the "hard-sell" off the site. I added a formal entrance (the logo landing page with a revised signature caning pattern) at the front and de-cluttered the home page to have a single (slide show) image with a clean row of highlight boxes to promote new lines, events, and press.

Green was an important element in all packaging so I used a dark green to create a more intimate mood for the site. The darkness also allowed the images to take center stage. I created a more stationery-like format to formalize the feel and used the "crest" logo at the top in gold for a crowning touch.

In the year following the redesign, sales and traffic doubled on the site.


-rm

Come On-A My House

One of the more challenging and satisfying projects was designing and creating the Agraria Villa Boxes (shown). Inspired by 18th century architectural models, I designed the series of three boxes as a vehicle for one of Agraria's signature products, potpourri.

The shot above, a deliberate stylistic departure from other Agraria photography, was the original shot for the 2008 Agraria catalog cover (shown in a later post in its final form). I was going for a more abstracted look that would compliment the interior product shots.

-rm

photo: Elio Tolot

Charlotte Moss

Following the success of the Michael S Smith Collection (see post Agraria 1.), I had designed a home fragrance collection for interior designer Charlotte Moss.

I wanted this collection to be a real departure from Agraria's more masculine aesthetic. Primarily because of Charlotte's trademark feminine style, a desire to exercise my love of 18th century decorative arts, and not since working on Barbie have I been able to revel in the world of "pretty" in such a satisfying way. Oh, btw, the pink is for the peppercorn in the fragrance...I swear, nothing to do with Barbie.

Shown above is Left Bank Perfumed Candle, AirEssence, and votive candle trio in a photo by Elio Tolot whom I worked with on all Agraria photography. This is one of two fragrance collections that was created for Charlotte.

As on all things Agraria, my role was "soup to nuts"... all details of concept, product definition, packaging, collateral, photo art direction, styling, etc.

-rm

photo: Elio Tolot

Perfumed Tassels

Product and Packaging Design

Agraria 1. The Beginning

In 2006 I took on a new client, Agraria San Francisco. My relationship with Agraria lasted about 3 years so I feel I need to give a little background before posting what is a large body of work created for them.

Agraria is a luxury home fragrance company probably best known for their potpourri, diffuser oils (AirEssence) and perfumed candles. The company was founded by Stanford Stevenson and Maurice Gibson in 1969 and they sold products exclusively in their Nob Hill shop, but in the 70's expanded to stores like Henri Bendel and Bergdorf Goodman in New York.

In addition to the enthusiasm toward the unique and rich fragrances, the founders were so particular about to-whom and where they sold their products that over the years it stayed a bit of a "well kept secret" for the Park Avenue crowd. The current owners purchased the company in 2004 and quickly re-branded, added some new products and went about building the business and maintaining their luxury status.

When I met Agraria, they did not have any in-house design or creative direction for the brand. The new owners were not from creative backgrounds as the founders had been so they commissioned a design firm to create the re-brand in 2004/5 and Agraria was managing the brand but was understandably struggling with brand extensions and creation and integration of new concepts.

In 2006 Agraria commissioned me to design packaging for a new line of products for interior designer Michael S. Smith. Having just read his book "Elements of Style" I was excited to do the project.

Some work had begun on the product definition so I focused on packaging but stayed close to Agraria's existing package structures and formats. I stuck to the format not only to save money but to maintain some visual brand connection while allowing the line to be independent. It was Agraria's first co-branding venture and the launch was very successful.

Following this project I would then design three other product lines for them in addition to an overhaul of the website. I was then asked if I would join them on staff and in June of 2007 I became Agraria's Executive Creative Director.

-rm