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

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

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