What I loved in design this month| March 2024
All the visual identities I interacted with and loved last month and what makes them good or what doesn’t….
This article is arranged in chronological order of my experience. It’s not arranged based on how much I liked some design.
Fanta Can
What I liked
Besides the much-needed modernisation, what I love about the Fanta rebranding is how versatile the new design language is…. 🍊
Not just the orange flavour Fanta is well known for but also the secondary flavours like grape fit perfectly in it. It is one of my favourite recent big FMGC rebrandings for a long list of reasons…. 🍇
Concerns
One concern with new can designs might be that the entire brand name is not visible from one side of the can. But cans are displayed with multiple in a row on the shelves. The entire 360° view can be completed on the shelves using ~3 cans. This problem is only limited to the taller cans anyway. Moreover, you don’t need to read the entire name to recognize a brand from afar…. ✌️
Mr Makhana packed snacks
What I liked
An example of why your product shouldn’t look like every other item on the selves….
I saw this packet in a convenience store in Bengaluru. I almost immediately picked it up because its packaging design looked very different from everything else on the shelf….
It did end up tasting good too…. 😋
Concerns
Two concerns are how the name of the flavour gets a bit lost and the pack doesn’t convey the USPs well. But it makes up for that by standing out well enough. But a more important issue to fix is the poor feasibility of the “R” in “MR”….
Sorse ceiling decoration
What I liked
I visited a restaurant called Sorse in Bengaluru recently. And I enjoyed its branding besides the good food. There are a few things that I’d do differently in terms of visual identity but this application of their logo as a ceiling decoration was well done…. 🥘
Concerns
The beams are not working that well for the aesthetics but I guess they used them to make the installation easier…. 🤓
Coca-Cola Vanilla Can
What I liked
I like how they’ve incorporated the Coca-Cola branding in this secondary flavour. I also like the signature strong typography and hierarchy in it…. 👏
Concerns
But I also have a little bit of mixed feelings due to the poor contrast in terms of colour. It’s almost impossible to recognize the can from a distance if you don’t know what it is beforehand…. 🔍
Another problem with the choice of colour is how it looks closer to sand, cardboard, coffee or even chocolate than the popularly perceived colour for vanilla flavour. An easy solution for the contrast issue could’ve been using black for the text which is something Coke uses on several of their other products…. 😅
Alo Frut Mojito can
What I liked
When I first discovered Alo Frut, I loved their minimalistic design language…. 💙
So, when I found this can recently I was surprised to see such a maximalist wild-west inspired packagingdesign from Alo. But it’s working great and I ain’t complaining. I like how they made so many different typefaces work together and how they separated the maximalist portion from their minimal logotype using different background colours…. 👏
Concerns
The two major concerns for this are the hierarchy, especially in terms of colour contrast and how busy it is. The colour contrast is a bit of an issue considering it makes the name of the flavour hard to read. But the busy aspect unlike most cases kinda plays into the vibe of the drink…. 🤔
Simba beer
What I liked
Simba is a great example of having a well-designed brand mascot. When done in a scalable format, a mascot can make scaling your branding in multiple touchpoints much easier. But if you are going the mascot route, you gotta make sure that it has an accompanying tone and story that fits well with your brand personality…. 🦁
Concerns
The name sounds familiar to some popular fictional characters but it’s also a term in many languages. So, practically none…. ✌🏽
Oven Story pizza box
What I liked
When I visited Bengaluru recently, I tried Oven Story because it was recommended by some of my friends who live there. And the taste did live up to its reputation…. 🍕
Concerns
Unlike the taste, the packaging turned out to be an eyesore. This is one of the busiest designs I’ve seen from any successful brand as far as I remember. It’s so busy and disorganized that you probably didn’t even notice that there’s a QR code in it. All the best in finding it…. 😅
Moreover, capital letters lose their purpose when you capitalize everything. Packaging might not be the driving factor of pizza sales, but packaging plays a huge role in influencing repeat buys and word-of-mouth advertisements. Randomizing words doesn’t work when they are not random enough either. The logo itself ain’t good either but that’s a different conversation…. 🤦🏽♂️
Pasta Street monochrome logo
When I visited Bengaluru last month, we had a team dinner at Pasta Street. The experience was great. Partly for being part of a great team and partly for the great food. The more important thing that I enjoyed was their branding …. 😋
What I liked
The Pasta Street logo is made of different variants of pasta. But that would be lost in the logo's monochrome version without the pasta's intricacies. So, they went with the monochromatic logo in the form of lines instead of blocks. This maintained the textural intricacies of the logo design and looked great as well. Their primary logo is more obvious as it uses photographic pasta elements. But I find the monochromatic version more inspiring as it’s smart…. 🤓
IndiGo inflight menu
I usually don’t fly since the places I commonly travel to don’t have an airport. So, coincidentally all of my flight experiences have been with IndiGo. They have their problems but branding ain’t one of them. I recently flew from Bengaluru to Bhubaneswar and since my phone network wasn’t working on air, I picked up their inflight magazine…. ✈️
What I liked
It made me a little nostalgic since reading print media magazines is very rare now. But what kept me hooked was the great print design in it. One of my favourite pages was this foods section where they used ingredients and food chunks to represent their logo very beautifully. I’ve seen many brands try to visualize their logo design through food. But this is one of the best examples of that I’ve come across…. 🛩️
Amul inflight print ad
Amul has good branding and advertisement design in general. But this print ad I found recently in the inflight magazine from IndiGo is one of my favourites…. 🥛
What I liked
Notice they are taking advantage of the context that this is being read on air. They are using different products of theirs as destinations in a flight map. It’s both smart and aesthetic. Well done, Amul…. 👏
Budweiser Green Apple non-alcholic beer can
I came across the new green apple flavour of Budweiser’s non-alcoholic range recently. Budweiser has a good branding and packaging design when it comes to their core beer segment. It’s recognizable and clear with the vibe…. 🍻
What I didn’t like
But when it comes to their non-alcoholic range, they’re being too lazy and trying too hard to fit it within the current design language. The green colour coding ain’t working either since it’s occupying way too small a space to have any visual impact. The only thing that’s working for them is the recognizability…. 😅
Possible direction
And if you look into the product range of Budweiser, you’ll find BudLite that looks different from the core beer range. So, it’s not that Budweiser has never rolled out packaging design that is a bit different. But for some sad reason, they haven’t done it for their non-alcoholic range. While it was fine when they had only one product in that range, it needs a refresh now that they are bringing in flavours…. 🍺
Budweiser 0.0 non-alcoholic beer
The packaging design of the alcohol-free range from Budweiser is a prime example of how bad typography can lead to lotta wasted space…. 😅
What I don’t like
Look at the area around “0.0”. It is blank and unused. That area is a little more filled in the flavoured offering but is still utilized poorly. Budweiser is being way too lazy with the branding of this series…. 🍺
Bud Light and Bud Zero are good examples of doing it right. They are from the same company…. 🤷🏽
New Pesi branding hits stores
I waited a long time to take this photo. The rebranded Pepsi packaging has finally started to ship in India. I wasn’t very sure when they announced the rebranding last year. But now that I’ve interacted with it personally, I think the rebranding was done well…. 🥤
What I like
It is bolder, more attention-grabbing, and has better contrast. The introduction of secondary brand elements also makes it more scalable and adaptable. Now I’m looking forward to interacting with the new cans…. 🍒
Nutriboat Okra Chips
I have a habit of trying some one new thing during my weekly grocery shopping. Came across this Okra Chips by Nutriboat and the packaging design is so confusing that I bought it just to see what it is….
Luckily the product tastes much better than I expected it to. And the ingredient photography on the packaging design gave me some confidence. If I buy it again I’ll buy it only for the taste, not the packaging….
What I didn’t like
Besides a clear message about the product, it lacks hierarchy and contrast in the design….
Schweppes Mano Soda can
I like the minimalistic branding of Schweppes in general and this is no exception to this…. 🍋
What I like
The packaging design of this can is not as minimalistic as most other cans of Schweppes but in a good way. I like how prominent the logo is and shares the same location as every other can of Schweppes. I also like how the logo is being used to separate the cursive script area with the name of the flavour from the lower half with the illustration of the ingredient…. 👏
This is a self-taught multidisciplinary creative hooman and a veracious empath who loves branding. Besides strategic aesthetics, I take a keen interest in philosophy, psychology and exploring new experiences beyond the superficial….
You can book a mentorship or consultation session with me on ADPList or TopMate….
Through my 6+ years of experience as a designer, I’ve built and led multi-disciplinary teams, worked with 80+ clients [such as Indian Oil and KIIT], won awards [such as Odisha Skills] and got my works featured by international organizations [such as the World Brand Design Society and DesignRush]. I’ve helped companies get funding, million+ traction and 10k+ subscribers through the right branding. I can help you to combine strategy with aesthetics to make a positive impact….
