Recently I appeared in BBC1 show, High Street Dreams with Jo Malone and Nick Leslau, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk a little about my contribution to it. I barely appeared on the screen but some of the work I did became a important part of the episode. The show itself has a very good focus on branding and packaging and it was great to be involved as a graphic designer in the project.
I was asked to work on it through David Strang of Wicked Vision, who was mentoring Jo and Kay, the two women featured on the show, about their toy, the Den Kit. The Den Kit is a fantastic item, a kit bag stuffed full of ground mats, ropes, torches and even camouflage paint, all there so that kids – and most likely their parent’s too – can make their own little den anywhere that you can string up the cover sheet. The whole point was that it was rough and ready and there wasn’t one set way to put it up, so it encouraged experimentation and play. All good things. David recommended me to help out with the branding and packaging, since when they came to him the Den Kit was in a haversack and while the visual identity was good, it wasn’t going to cut it on the shelves of Hamleys and the like.
We met first of all in David's warehouse to discuss the challenges and talk through some ideas. The proposition was a hard one. I understood the brief and it could be split into two clear routes: outdoor and rugged, and eco and natural. So far so good. However we were on a crazy tight schedule and more to the point I had to present some impressive and finished options at the next meeting. This involved two different logos for each idea, unique packaging solutions and the full layout for each route. I settled on three styles of packaging, from the cheapest to the most expensive. I have to thank Studio This&That, two amazing graphic designers, who were fantastic in giving me support, ideas and focussing my mind for the project.
The route that was chosen was the one that they showed on the programme for obvious reasons but I thought I'd explain the other routes aswell.
The cheapest option was to be a plain cardboard box, printed one colour and reversed out to give it some visual interest and make it stand out on the shelves. This was the style that most fitted with the old idea of the Den Kit, and felt very much like it was hitting the eco and the budget side of the brief.
The next in line was to be a cardboard box again but this time printed full colour and with a gloss laminate, as shown in the image here. Within the box the idea was to have a cutaway to make a feature of one of the best items in the Den Kit, the mallet. The mallet was made by Jo and Kay themselves and was two parts of a tree from their own land, stuck together. It is a great piece of equipment and sets the tone for the whole play experience of the Kit, and so it seemed a good idea to make a virtue of it. They loved the idea of the cutaway, but as time progressed it became obvious that money constraints were going to prevent that from happening.
The final option – which in my heart I knew they wouldn’t go for but I wanted to show as a possibility – was to make the box an additional part of the Den Kit. We spoke a lot in the briefing about possible ways to reduce waste in the packaging and it struck me that to do that really well you would need to make the box itself something that you wouldn’t throw away. By making it into a wooden crate, it has a number of uses. It can be a storage box, a chair, a table, or – if you are freezing cold – firewood. The box would have the design laser-etched on the front, and while the whole thing would be expensive to produce, it could have raised the price point to a stage where the Den Kit made good profit, rather than the pence they were working to when I first met them.
The render you can see was made on Strata 3D, a brilliant programme which I can’t say I’m an expert at but I kinda knocked them out through a process of late night trial and error and I was pretty happy with the result. The reveal itself went very well. They all responded fantastically to the ideas, some liked some, others like others, but the most amazing thing was that Jo and Kay got quite emotional during the meeting. Not only was the whole experience quite overwhelming but, seeing the renders on a big screen in a suitably-exposed-brickwork building in central London just drove home to them the fact that this was no longer the small cottage industry they had started in a corner of their houses, and they seemed emotional but resigned to the fact that to compete in a commercial market it needed to look bright and modern. Jo Malone and the girls all liked different ones but in the end the middle option was chosen. On that one, the font was almost universally disliked. In fact the only people who liked it were Jo Malone and myself. The type was Taroca and it struck me an excellent but ornamental way to show the typeface as if it were hewn out of wood. But, being an open sort, I have since shown them a number of other options and we have settled on a very nice alternative.
As was seen, the Den Kit shifted it’s look a lot from that reveal due to money constraints and other factors. Since their pitch to The Entertainer, there is more to be done. I am still working on it and can't show you anything until the items hit the shops in a few months time. The whole experience was great, if a little fraught, and I hope that the programme showed some of the challenges that face branding companies when they try to create a product that can withstand travel, sit well on the shelves and remain a bright and fun item that attracts consumers in the nanoseconds that they look at a product.
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