The NNew Can designed by Jiwoon Park and Kwenyoung Choi. The consumer is motivated to crush the can as it looks fun to do, and it definitely helps with saving space in the recycling bin!

I love these! So often dairy producers will shy away from showing where their product comes from (ie cows), but this Romanian company goes right ahead and warps their milk in a cow-hide! Love the honesty and freshness in this packaging.

Here are a beautifully Designed set of herbal water labels by McLean design in the USA. I love their simplicity with strong variant colour-coding, while the wodden background and the photography give it a very natural feel. It’s nice to see some very easy to read type running vertically on these labels as this is something clients will often shy away from.

Too much choice?

On my return to the UK from New Zealand I had to readjust in many ways to things I had forgotten or just erased from my memory. One of these things is overcrowded supermarkets and the vast amount of choice we face whenever we buy something. Every purchase offers multiple options sometimes with little to distinguish one from another. In design week I was interested to read an article about this, and they predict that driven by recession and consumer confusion this will be rationalised “This will eventually result in about four options per product/ the market leader, the number two, a challenger and a supermarket own-brand”

Given this, which ones will survive? Old favourites… You know the ones. They have been around forever and are consistent in their branding, slow to change. Owned by large often global companies, although priced a little more than the own label option in times of uncertainty they offer reassurance.

As well as these we are seeing a raft of smaller start up brands. They are in most cases niche, local and have more of an element of the hand made and so offer something different that big brands can’t do in a true sense.

Supermarket own brands are also upping there game and moving into the branded territory. This is a Tesco own brand believe it or not. Own brand will always compete on price and now it seems they compete for our affection as well along with all the other brands.

So as choice seems to be expanding it will be interesting to see if, as predicted brands disappear, which ones will survive?

This is one of ours We’ve been rebranding the whole Hubbards range for the last year and are very proud to be able to show what we have come up with.

This is Hubbard’s core range of Mueslis. many thanks to Daron Parton and Watermark for the beautiful illustration.

A beautiful example of proprietary bottle design. This premium sake appears in packaging modeled on bamboo.

Design by: ChappsMalina

Here is a very cute take on honey with the ‘g’ of ‘honig’ transformed into a lovely little honeybee icon. Black and gold are rich, premium colour choices that complement the colour of the product beautifully.

Designer: unknown

Don’t you just love an innovative dieline? This apple-shaped box is a masterpiece of folding and just begs the viewer to pick the apple up, hold it and examine it. I’d very much like to see what the dieline looks like when flat, but in true eco-concious fashion it seems to require no gluing as the box is held in shape by the stalk.

I can’t remember where I found this image or who created the design and dieline – so if anyone knows please post credits!