Part 4 - The packaging roads not taken
Choosing the packaging of our wonderful bars was really good fun. We were unbelievably lucky with this one, as looking back, it could so easily have been such a disaster.
We enlisted the help of a family friend (she had been in my sister's year at primary school) and was now a professional graphic designer. They say never mix business with friends or family, and I completely see why. There is nothing more devastating than realising that you are putting a friendship in jeopardy because of necessary business decisions. Luckily for us, the complete opposite happened with this partnership. Our friend, diligently professional, produced absolutely incredible work for us.
We were thrilled.
Of all the things that we have done with An'du this part was easily one of the most enjoyable. Most of the business is done by ourselves, but on a few other occasions where we have decided to bring in outside help, we have generally ended up spending a lot of money with very little to show for it. This, again, could not have been further from our experience with our designer.
Rather embarrassingly, when we first approached her, we still had an old name (Soul and Sea, see here for the full story on the naming saga). So our first set of designs were based around that name, and it is here where our designer demonstrated her full creative talent. I wanted to take you through all the different stages, so that, if anyone ever does undertake a similar process, then they can know what to expect. Admittedly, we have only undertaken this process once, but honestly, I could not imagine any way in which this could have been easier or smoother for us. The whole thing was just seamless.
1) The mood board and idea gathering
We started with a conversation about the kinds of things we envisioned for our brand, colours, other brands that we liked etc. She showed us examples of bold, shouty brands, earthier brands, quirky brands etc and we spoke about how we felt An'du (Soul and Sea at the time) fitted into those. She asked us to give her a mood board with the kinds of packaging and colour schemes that we liked.
2) Where we sit
Our designer then presented us with where she saw us sitting in the wider scheme of brands already out there.
We agreed that we didn't want to be too loud and bright preferring the more natural look as we felt this represented not only our ethos and bars, but also ourselves. I personally really like the utilitarian branding, but we felt that An'du had more to it than that and also - hard to compete with a brand like Aesop!
3) The initial ideas
We were then shown 5 initial ideas along with the inspiration and concepts behind them. She also, rather wonderfully, would present each idea as if we had made it big and had our branding on all sorts of lifestyle elements - it was super inspirational to see!
Here are the 5 ideas we were presented with - we'd love to know in the comments if you'd have chosen differently!
IDEA 1
IDEA 02
IDEA 03
IDEA 04
IDEA 05
I think you'd agree, it was very hard to choose!
We (obviously) went with design idea 4, although we were both very torn between that one and number 1 also. Do you have a favourite? Let us know below in the comments.
4) The new logo
It was at this point that we then made the name change from Soul and Sea to An'du, so our wonderful designer, without comment, presented us with the following ideas for our new logo:
IDEA 01a
IDEA 01b
IDEA 02a
IDEA 02b
IDEA 02c
She then gave us the line up and let us decide. Once again, we agonised over this one (albeit rather enjoyable agonising). We would love to know if you'd have picked differently? I think for me, it was between our current logo and idea 02C - I really loved the tie in with the boat and the etymology of An'du, but in the end we went with the simple 'a' loving it for its cleanness and clearness.
5) The colour pallet and refinement process
She then presented us with the illustrations that the artwork was based on and followed up with different colour palettes and concepts.
We spent a long time talking through these and picking out different elements that we liked. She listened to us carefully throughout and was incredibly skilled at picking up our ideas even when we couldn't explain them very quickly.
This is the colour pallet that we eventually settled on. We wanted warm, but gentle colours that all complemented each other when they were set out side by side.
6) Icons and cutter laydowns
We knew that we had elements about our bars that we wanted to shout about, so we asked our designer to create little icons for us that we could use to symbolise the values that we wanted to be prominent.
She of course gave us different alternatives and variations:
But ultimately we liked the initial designs the best and stuck with those.
We then went through how we would like all of this to look when it was actually on a 3D packet.
The differences and details are only minor, but so many people make split second judgments based on a glance, so it was essential that we got this bit correct.
7) Social media and our website
With everything in place for the actual packets, we moved onto the look and feel of our social media and the website design.
She had so many amazing ideas for this and I think you'll probably agree that our current instagram page, doesn't have quite the same curated look as this proposal, but it was certainly inspiring nonetheless.
The website
The website design was again, really beautiful. We found out later that the design was harder to implement than we had expected, so we've had to modify somewhat to fit with our limited expertise and budget. All the inspiration however, came from here and we owe her a lot!
I've only added the overview here, but she went into a lot more detail for each section with explanations on each element and design aspect.
So there you have it! A rather more visual blog post than usual, but I hope it was fun seeing the paths not taken in the design process. Did we choose correctly? Let us know in the comments below!