Introduction

For the last 4 years until my recent move to SF, I was the product and communication designer at SYS — a Warsaw based eco-food company. The company bases its products on a drying process — one of the most traditional forms of food conservation. The drying method removes water from fruits and vegetables, while saving the majority of vitamins and nutritional elements. Drying enables the conservation of food without any kind of added chemicals, pigments or conservatives. The customer just adds water to Grandma Zosia Meals products, a mix of vegetables and spices, and quickly cooks the natural soups and meals. Grandma Zosia Meals offers three series: soups, rice/barley meals and recently added potato pancakes . The company mission is to bring a healthy alternative to the ready-made food section of the grocery store shelves.

Context

Previous to my employment at Grandma Zosia Meals, the designs were divided into two series with a completely in-cohesive aesthetic. All the promotional materials looked different, because there weren’t any established style guidelines. Additionally, all the products were poorly designed, compositions lacked hierarchy and structure, and most importantly packagings didn’t effectively communicate Grandma Zosia Meal’s main values.

Packaging Redesign

Background

As a freshly graduated designer and new to the position of creative director of a company, I knew that I needed help from someone more experienced on the first packaging redesign.

I conducted a search for a branding agency and chose Warsaw-based studio Brandy Design. This wasn’t a conventional client-agency relationship. As a designer myself I directed the design process and worked closely with the designers: I first conceptualized the aesthetic, then created my own designs to contribute to the project direction.

Project Goals

• Unify two different packaging styles for soups and rice/barley meals.
• Clearly articulate main values of the products: only natural ingredients, easy to store and cook meal, and multiple portions in one package.
• Develop design that has a modern aesthetic and a sense of warmth.

Work Process

Below is my contribution to the original designing process. I used natural paper as the background, and juxtaposed it with flat saturated colors. The colors bring playfulness and modern feel to the series and also allow for stronger differentiation between meals.

Final Designs

In total we came up with 16 designs — 8 soups and 8 rice/barley meals.

Results

We often received enthusiastic reaction to the Grandma Zosia Meal’s redesign from wholesale management and retailers. We believe the new designs helped access three new big chain-stores in the following year and increased sales 34% in the first year and 42% in the second.

Additions to the Series

Background

I comprehensively designed in total five additions to the series. My work included: creating illustrations, developing color schemes and preparing and proofing files for print.

Potato Pancakes

About

I comprehensively designed the 3rd Grandma Zosia Meals series — Potato Pancakes. I developed illustration, typography and color schemes for the series.

Goals

• Establish differentiation between Potato Pancakes and two other series
• Retain overall Grandma Zosia Meal’s design principles and look

Process

Final Work

Although I felt that the yellow pancakes do not fit with the design, SYS company management wished to include them. They believed that the packages that include yellow pancakes would be more visible on the groceries store shelves.

I still believe yellow is somehow alien to the packaging colors and to the generally natural feel of the series. Below is the design I would have chosen.

Results

The Potato Pancakes series was well received first by the retailers, then by the customers. We were able to sell 27,000 products in the first 6 months, roughly half of the established Grandma Zosia Soups — our best selling series.

Branding Guidelines

About

With the first redesign of Grandma Zosia Meals, Brandy Design studio and I, the creative director, created the first unified branding for the company.

Goals

After two years of using this branding, we gradually decided to enhance our aesthetic through consumer research. Therefore, I conducted research to test our style guidelines. We wanted to strengthen communication with our customers.

Consumer Research

In addition to our current visual ID, I developed two other branding directions. I presented consumers with these three visuals, and asked them to rate from 1–10 how the designs correspond to the three main Grandma Zosia Meals values:

• Only natural ingredients
• Meals that are is easy to cook and store
• Multiple portions in one package

Consumer research was conducted in the three most important environments for our retail: a major grocery store, a local grocery store and a wholesale market. The survey took around 2 minutes and I was able to conduct 60 (20 in each environment) with our designated consumer base — 70% women age 24–50 and 30% men age 24–50.

We were surprised that our current branding, Option A, received the lowest score of the three — 5.4 out of 10. Option B received the highest score of 8.4, while option C received 6.5.

Back to Designing

We were satisfied with the result of Option B, and therefore I developed new branding guidelines. Subsequently, I created a whole spectrum of company projects using those style guidelines, i.e. stands, catalogs, leaflets, banners, and online materials. Images below are various aspects of the new branding.

Results

Grandma Zosia Meals felt the impact of our new branding almost immediately. Over the next six months we measured a 34% increase in both wholesale and retail.

Website

I always advocated for strong Grandma Zosia Meals web presence. At the beginning of 2014 I was able to redesign its website. We created responsive website using Salient Wordpress framework.

Social Media

In addition to my role as designer and creative director, I also created, designed and maintained the SYS Facebook page. I achieved high user engagement scores; developed and designed numerous interactive posts, contests and announcements.