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.

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