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.

A Poster Post

 

I have had the wonderful opportunity to dip a toe into the world of the theatre. No, sadly, not to realize my childhood dream to sing or dance ...to everyone's relief. Instead, to exercise my chosen path of design. This opportunity was due to my incredibly talented friend and wordsmith Mark Campbell.

Coming off a recent Grammy Nomination for the recording of his opera Volpone, he is preparing to open a new comic opera, The Inspector, at Wolftrap this April. He asked if I would create the poster for the show and I believe I had agreed to do it before he finished the sentence.

The Inspector is based on Gogol's The Government Inspector. For the opera, the political satire was reset in in Mussolini's Sicily and as Mark clarified "dictatorship is ALWAYS a ripe situation for comedy!"

The story has a strong theme of questioned identity. Mark had something Magritte-like in mind for the design as well as some reference to themes of corruption and Italian nationalism.

I looked to European posters of the period as visual reference. They were such a key medium for propaganda/advertising (same thing, really) for this period that it seemed a good place to start. I illustrated the black suit and fedora to allude very gently to gangster style with it's late 20's silhouette. The refined and more reserved typography, the vest, tie, and white shirt make the figure a bit more of a gentleman or perhaps government official. The corruption theme is hopefully recognized by the lire lining/pocket square details. The focused red and green color palette ideally give it Italian flavor. In the final version the green, white, and red flag stripes in the background give this theme more patriotic power.

I developed about 5 design directions. It came down to the green background with red lire details (shown above) and the Italian flag background with lire in hat. The Italian flag version (shown below left) was ultimately chosen.

The last poster I designed for Mark was in '95 for the musical Splendora (shown below right). This was while I was part of Manville:Bakacs:Santana design firm in NY and is also on my website of work created before 2005 (yellow link and password on the right).

Do-Gooding Good Cookies

My friend Jacqui Farina had been a board member and volunteer with Project Angel Food for some time. She called me about an idea she had to create a line of cookies for them and if I would design the brand/packaging for it.

In case you're not aware of Project Angel Food, they cook & deliver more than 13,000 meals a week to men, women and children affected by HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life threatening illnesses. They have their own kitchens here in LA where they create all these meals.

So, the idea of taking a charity bake sale concept to a "Newman's Own" type business model seemed like a total "no-brainer". Needless to say, I said yes.

I started with the understanding that the product line would be positioned as a more giftable gourmet market item vs a mass "chips-ahoy" snack product. Not only because of the price point and quality of the product but to speak to a generally more affluent and/or charitable consumer familiar with Project Angel Food.

With the sub-brand name "Project Angel Food Bakers" we all agreed on, I kept the logo design as close to the organizations branding as possible to ensure the highest brand recognition. The PAFB brand's visual differentiation would be in the execution of other elements.

When eating a cookie all you really care about is if it tastes good. I put together the idea of how much good each cookie sold could do with how good the cookie tastes and came up with "the do-gooding good cookie".

The playfulness of the name felt particularly right for communicating the overall mission of bringing a smile and well-being to people in need and absolve the cookie eater of any quilt for eating as much as they can.

Angel imagery is obviously important to the existing PAF brand. Showing the goodness of the cookie and visually tying it to the charity's brand became clear... make the cookie an angel. Adding the halo helped to focus the idea on "goodness" vs a cookie that just died and went to heaven (no matter how accurate that may be once you bite into one).

Keeping the palette softly bright and most elements white helped keep the mood happy as well as allow the blue logo and the cookie to stand out.

The Do-gooding Good Cookies premier this week, with 100 percent of the purchase price being donated directly back to support Project Angel Food's life-saving meal service in a partnership with Pavilions stores.



Please, check out Project Angel Food's site for more info or to volunteer at www.angelfood.org.

Exotic

Dayna Decker is probably best known for her wood wick candles. Her collections of home fragrance products are in high-end retail shops around the world. You can check out Daynadecker.com if you would like to know more.

This past spring and summer, I designed a variety of product packaging/branding and re-branding for Dayna. The products are in the same category as Agraria, shown on this blog, but the brand is very different as you can see. Dayna's brand style is more modern, clean, and restrained.

I designed the Exotic collection packaging featuring a matte black stock with high-gloss silhouetted floral photography to compliment the previous collections and celebrate the rich and moodier fragrances.

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.